


Hearts of Stone

by Hartwin_Casualty (Cody_Thomas)



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Consensual Underage Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Gargoyles AU, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Verse, Time Travel, Underage Prostitution, Underage dubcon, Young Harry, older eggsy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:29:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8038663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cody_Thomas/pseuds/Hartwin_Casualty
Summary: Original prompt was for reverse age shota, in a medieval gargoyle AU, with Child!Harry, AdultGargoyle! Eggsy, and evil controlling Chester King. I threw in a prophesy, an Arthurian legend, and as many of Solarift’s likes and interests as wanted to join. An unexpected one went and tried to take over the story, and I almost let it because I was having so much fun.





	1. Bound by Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solarift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarift/gifts).



> Written for Solarift, and dedicated with love and excitement to blackmakethme at Soolie’s request. The fact it’s for both of you makes me feel like I got to write two gifts instead of one, which makes me feel so special, and I hope it lives up to your expectations. This plot bunny very much turned rabid, got away from me for awhile and bred like they were solely responsible for the future of their race. I had a lot more I wanted to do with this idea, and this idea was just so very fun, that I would not be surprised if this turns into a series later on.
> 
>  
> 
> Please know that I am a renaissance faire worker/re-enactor, and due to that background I will have undoubtedly thrown in random and archaic words for sex and/or penis. I have tried to limit myself since I know dozens and dozens of them, but I’m sure that cockerel, cockstand and pikestaff have at least made a few appearances, perhaps others. So if you run into an unfamiliar word or phrase during a sex scene, that’s why.

Thirty-Three Years Ago...

Betrayal from humans was a known truth, an eventual outcome, which is why Gargoyles didn’t tend to get involved in human affairs, and especially not their politics. If their territories didn’t seem to always overlap, often intentionally on the human’s parts, Aureos would have been happy to stay away from them entirely. His name meant ‘The Golden One’, as he had been called by the Romans for his golden hair, eyes, and wings. He'd been called the Golden Eagle of Zeus, Dragonborn, and now Gargoyle, the epitaphs were ever changing for their kind amongst the humans. In truth they had no names or titles, beyond ‘kinsman’, ‘clanmate’, ‘sibling’ ‘friend’, ‘lover’ ‘life mate’ and ‘parent’. 

He had learned in his long years that humans only tolerated their presence for as long as their kind were useful to them. But this, this betrayal was something he hadn’t expected. Argent, one of his own, an alpha from his own clan, had led him away from the clan, drugged his wineskin, and had locked some sort of magical collar around his throat while he’d been weakened for a few moments before his body had adapted and healed. 

But the damage was already done. Those few moments had been enough to be set upon by hidden guards, clamped in irons, his wings bound, his tail shackled and held immobilized. He was trapped, utterly and completely trapped. And now he was here, hauled before a human alpha he had never trusted, the man whose ‘friendship’ he had never accepted, and never would. 

For the past several years, the king had become obsessed with a prophecy from a woman with visions of the future. “Fear not, for the angel shall bring wisdom and prosperity unlike anything known. The peasant prince, held aloft in hidden piety, shall escape the serpent and claim the blood dragon’s crown for his own. The golden dragon, fierce and free, shall claim and crown the mother of wyvern kin and bearer of the bright future. Everbright Excalibur shall come to Camelot, and call loyal knights to their king. The true Arthur shall be crowned, the serpent slain and the blood dragon subdued forever more.” All because his crest was a crimson dragon, he had taken it literally. He was convinced that Aureos was the golden dragon, who would crown some sort of monster she devil to take his place.

“You cowardly viper!” he snarled at the king. “Shackled or not my clan will NEVER ally with you after this!”

“I am sorry it has come to this but you leave me no choice. Kneel, Aureos.”

The compulsion was fast, the urge to bend the knee, prostrate himself and comply. He fought it with ever fiber of his being. Never. Gargoyles bowed to NO ONE, especially not some cowardly traitorous human. The punishment was even faster. The collar choked him, cutting off his breath and threatening to kill him. Aureos didn’t care. Let Argent try explaining to the clan why Aureos did not return with him, why his body wasn’t found, or was found strangled, without answers. They would turn on him so fast he wouldn’t even be able to flee for his life. Stars were bursting in his vision, proud and strong though he was, he had no choice. He knelt. The fact it was from lack of air didn’t matter, the moment his knees touched stone he could breathe again, coughing and gasping for breath.

Argent stood nearby, directly behind the king, eyes cold, and no collar around his throat. He had betrayed them willingly then. He would PAY. They had always had their differences, but such utter betrayal could not go unpunished.

“Swear to me your fealty Aureos, or I shall hold you here and destroy your entire clan the minute after the sun rises tomorrow morning.” The king sneered and Aureos felt nothing but disgust and cold dread. The fact that Argent remained impassive, unmoving and cold after such a blatant threat to his clan, and even his brothers… Aureos felt sick. Argent had always been ambitious, but this? He never would have thought him capable. How far his one time friend had fallen.

The words were like acid laced poison, but he was forced to speak them anyway even though he didn’t mean a single word of them.

“I swear to you my fealty and my service. I will guard you and uphold your laws, with my life if I must. So do I swear.” the words were vile filth in his mouth, and he also vowed silently, that someday, somehow, the king and the traitor would regret ever attempting such a barbarous act. No spell was without its weaknesses, no curse could not be broken. He would find that way and he would destroy Argent and the king, by the blood in his veins he swore that he would be free again.

“I accept your vow Aureos.” The king said with a smile and the shackles and the bind on his wings were removed, but even though he tried, Aureos could NOT launch forward with claws raised to shred the king and Argent into pieces. He tried, oh he tried over and over, but he couldn’t move a muscle. The king smirked and Argent walked forward and placed the wrapped bundle in his hand. He blanched pale at seeing the multiple collars. NO... “Now go, Aureos, and bind the others into my service.”

He had no choice, NO CHOICE but to do as commanded even though the very idea made him ill. He fought against it, again and again, only to be driven to his knees time after time, the collar choking him, hazing his mind, forcing him to comply, barely even letting him breathe until he did as ordered. But he would not take the fall for this, he wouldn’t be known as the traitor of his people or the cause of their enslavement. He wasn’t subtle, subtlety had never been his specialty, so truly it was the king and Argent’s own fault that they had sent him out of everyone to do this dastardly thing, regardless that he was their leader, and was therefore implicitly trusted.

He grabbed Anglius first, even though his second in command would have been who Argent expected him to go for, the others falling in line behind them, unprotesting. If he was to have even the slightest chance of winning against Argent, he needed Anglius and Pegasi on his side, and Sabelle free. “Courtesy of the King, and Lord Argent!” He snarled loud enough for all of them to hear as he locked the collar around Anglius’ throat. “Take your brother, we’ll need his help.” he murmured into Anglius’ ear, and passed him half of the collars. 

He then set upon his people with the single minded focus of obeying the orders he’d been given, choosing not so much the strongest warriors, but the ones able to best survive, and the ones most likely to be able to help him outmaneuver Argent and the king. Corvis and his cunning, Annmarie and her stealth, Lapis and her magic paired with Pegasi and Anglius would be an unstoppable force. It wasn’t brute force he needed, it was perseverance and intelligence. 

He did not capture his second alpha in command, Sabelle, he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Now that she had been alerted to the danger, she was fighting back, hard. She had not earned the battlefield title ‘demon banshee’ for nothing, and didn’t even hesitate to retaliate against him, managing to catch his left eye as he slipped one of the collars into her tunic. She would lead the others who escaped, keep them safe, and study the thing which controlled them. He had every confidence in her.

“New territory.” He managed to gasp to her, warning her to leave the kings’ lands entirely, that he knew something that would make them unsafe for them to remain any place where the king had influence. Her eyes went wide and she nodded before slamming him hard into the ground and the wall, successfully dazing him for several moments.

The king had not specified ALL of the others, and Aureos hadn’t ordered Anglius to do more than capture their brother, hoping to keep half the collars AWAY from their clan. He gave no orders to pursue or fight, even though he knew he could. Unfortunately the orders were still in effect. Those collared lunged at their brethren to capture others. Anglius and Pegasi had managed to capture Ametrine, Faun, and Vertaina, the latter of which he was surprised by, since she was as fierce as her sister Sabelle, but perhaps they had merely gotten lucky. Together they took down Nathaniel, Piers, and Hugo, but thankfully the collars were whipped out of their hands and scattered across the floor. After Aureos captured Roxy and Charlie who helped him take down Gazelle, his handful of collars was also lost onto the floor and capture became much harder. 

Sabelle slammed Charlie and Roxy unconscious and threw Gazelle clear across the room. “I have Bested the Alpha and lieutenants in combat and stand as the new clan Alpha! Retreat! We are betrayed! Retreat loyal clanmates, retreat! Do not fight them! Retreat!” 

The rest of the gargoyles fled immediately, avoiding the fate the king wished for them. His clan were not fools. Only sixteen of their fifty-seven clanmates were captured, including himself, the rest fled with Sabelle. He didn’t give chase, deciding the injury to his wing was enough to keep him grounded, even though he had flown with worse before.

Aureos spat the mouthful of blood from his mouth that had collected after Sabelle’s blow. “We were ordered to capture, not pursue, don’t give chase.” A moment later the compulsion faded and they all relaxed. “So, the orders need to be specific. That might be our best weapon. Anything the orders don’t compel us to do, we won’t do. We may be slaves, but we have no reason to make the king happy. Sabelle is the leader and clan alpha of those who fled, but we’re still clan and a clan needs a leader. Do you choose me to remain clan alpha, or do you choose Argent? I accept any challengers.”

One by one they pressed a fist to their chests and inclined their heads in respect, the most any free gargoyle’s pride would allow them to bow or submit to another without force, and Argent would obviously not hesitate to use force against them. “Alpha” they solemnly stated “We pledge to you our loyalty, we shall protect what you protect, cherish what you cherish, and follow and obey your orders. So do we swear.” And Aureos’ rule over the remaining clan went uncontested by his lieutenants, and no one else wanted to challenge him and them. 

When he came to Argent’s brothers they looked scared. Argent had left them unprotected and at his mercy if it hadn’t gone well. “And you two? Me or your brother? I won’t hurt you if you choose him, since in a way he defeated me, no matter how dishonorable it was. I know it’s not an easy choice for you. But if it makes it any easier, the king threatened to smash all of us come sunrise if I didn’t bow to him, and Argent didn’t even flinch. He was not bound or under a spell, he stands with the king willingly. I could really use your help against him, you are the best magic users I have, along with Lapis. Together we can figure a way out of this. I captured you first because of how much I need you, not to get back at Argent.”

Pegasi and Anglius were scared, but still steady, clinging to each other as their anchor. They were the youngest captured, barely matured even a season ago. Aureous watched them clasp hands and nodded that they could speak as they came forward. 

“We choose you, Alpha.” they both declared, not only putting fist to heart, but fully bowing their heads in submission to Aureos. “We never stood with him, and do not approve.”

Aureos ruffled both their heads. “ I never thought you did. You’re too honest.”

“Alpha, Our brother Argent has betrayed us, and our clan. He is not kin, we declare him traitor.” Pegasi stated as firmly as he could. 

“We ask that he be cast out of the clan, and his blood name be taken from our own so his stain cannot reflect upon us. We are not traitors.” Anglius asked, and inclined his head in respect to his leader, and his brother followed.

Aureos smiled. They were the cleverest ones who had ever been born to his clan. “I hear you and agree, Argent has betrayed us utterly and is beyond redemption. Does anyone speak in his defense?”

There was nothing but silence.

“Then as Clan Alpha I banish him. The traitor Argent is henceforth cast out, banished, and named Clanless. He can not claim to be brother or friend or kin to anyone in my clan. May the stone take him, for we shall not.” It was with great satisfaction that he ripped the name plaque off of Argent’s plinth.

Each of them could feel the object that controlled their collars drawing nearer. “There had to have been a great battle, for so few to have been captured…” Vertaina stated and a smirk crossed nearly every single face. The room was disordered but the fight hadn’t lasted long enough to really wreck the rooms. Most had stayed well out of it.

“Do it.” Aureos ordered, and started by blowing out the nearest oil lamp and flinging the table at Gazelle, who gouged deep marks into it before toppling it over. The others got to work while Pegasi flew down and grabbed a pig from their food pen and broke it’s neck in one swift and painless move, then collected the blood and they all took turns dipping their claws, marking each other and the walls, tossing spatters of it all around. Fallen collars still littered the ground, their footsteps smearing them into the blood spattered stones, furniture and objects were broken, tossed, or scattered all over, a great mess, they even clawed each other and rent their clothes, and landed a few good convincing blows.

Once it was done, they righted the stool and tables, brought out the bandages, and sat, tending their wounds, waiting for the traitor and the king to show up. Some helped gut and start roasting the pig down in their cooking area off the back of the abandoned castle they lived in, where it wouldn’t be found.

“Well, this is a fine mess Aureos. Slavery, really? You don’t think I’d have been better off pulling you and the others out of the fire with Sabelle?” Charlie snarked as Gazelle tended the new cut on his head. Roxy just huffed and began tending the small tear in Aureos’ wing. 

Aureos smirked at the familiar and friendly banter. “If I let all of my lieutenants get away, Argent would become very suspicious. Besides, Sabelle can beat me, Roxy and I are evenly matched, Gazelle and I are evenly matched. YOU can’t beat me Charlie, and Argent knows it. So NOT capturing you when I had captured them would either look like you were a coward, or that I wasn’t obeying my disgusting orders. Only fifteen of us captured beside me is suspicious enough. I know it’s unbearable, but I swear we’ll become free again, and take revenge on the traitors. Let them think they won, let them become comfortable in their ‘victory’. I swear I’ll find the way to free us all.”

Vertiana placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She was always the voice of wisdom and calm practicality in a situation. “We are with you Aureos, our clan shall not remain divided forever, and our kin shall not forget us. No matter what is in store, we are kin, we are not alone.”

Anglius came over and asked a few questions about the spell that had been used to capture Aureos, then went and fetched the book Argent had most likely gotten it from and read it over. He smiled after a moment. 

“Argent is clever but he is not that clever. Enslavement magic is not even close to perfect, because anything that can think for itself will constantly fight against it. If this had been cast on unthinking beasts it would have worked the way the king had hoped, but on us, well it isn’t nearly strong enough to subdue us completely. The spell specifically states the owner of the enchanted item ‘cannot interfere with an established leader’s control over their people or government.’ Which means he can order you to do something, or us, and we have to obey because we are bound in the collars, but he cannot order you to hand over control over the clan, he cannot become clan leader, or post Argent in his stead. And if he tries to force you, the spell would weaken, possibly even break entirely because it goes against the terms it was designed with. That’s why Argent was the one who collared you, he’s going to make a case for defeating you and try to proclaim himself leader and clan alpha.”

“Well, good thing that two of my smartest were clever enough to make sure that couldn’t happen.” Aureos said with a smile. “Even I know a Clanless can’t try and become alpha, and even if they tried, it would have to be single combat to the death. Argent couldn’t beat me without being immediately challenged by all of my lieutenants for the title, and Argent is no fighter.”

Ten minutes later they had cleaned up most of the debris from the ‘battle’ and even began to scrub the blood off of the walls when a group of the king’s men and Argent arrived, tutting in disapproval. “Such violence Aureos. Was that really necessary?”

“If you wanted a slithering serpent to lead and deceive everyone quietly into slavery Argent, then you should have gone yourself. Besides, you should know that trying to insist Sabelle do anything which she finds extremely distasteful would never end in anything except violence and bloodshed. She rallied them against us, you’re lucky to have anyone left alive at all. Gargoyle pitted against gargoyle at the order of a human, after having a clan traitor help to enslave them. I am glad my parents did not live to see such a day.”

Argent stalked forward and backhanded Aureos across the face. “You will speak to me with respect. I have bested you Aureos, the clan is mine now!”

“No. Thanks to your betrayal MY clan belongs to the king, NOT to you. You never stated your claim for alpha after collaring me, because you know I would have contested it and it would have ended in combat to the death. Since you did not speak, it means you still recognized me as clan alpha. Sabelle then bested me and all of my lieutenants in fair combat and claimed the unbound as her clan before she departed. Those who remained were given the choice between you and myself, and all of them chose me as clan alpha and made the vow willingly. You were accused as traitor and deceiver to clan and kin. No one stood in your defense. As clan alpha I named you Clanless and every clanmate bore witness. You are cast out Argent, you own nothing.” Aureos snarled as he grabbed the name plaque off the table and tossed it at Argent’s feet.

“My sibling’s are to have no part of this, Aureos, I have special dispensation from the king. As long as they willingly swear allegiance to him they are to be released. Pegasi, Anglius, my brothers, my kin, you were never meant to be captured. Take back the words and all is forgiven, I understand your anger in the moment, but I would never betray you. Say the word and I shall free you.” 

Pegasi spat at him. “All of your words are lies! How foolish do you think we are? Release these collars and we shall tear you limb from limb, Clanless. You have no power or authority over us or the clan, nor shall we grant it back to you. Aureos is clan leader, not you. You made your choice, now live with it. Sleep your days with your new allies. Keep them as your family and kin, knowing that you destroyed our bonds of blood with your own hands. Traitor.”

The king was close now, they all could feel it. Argent’s plans were obviously thwarted, only a handful of gargoyles to present to the king, merely six were seasoned warriors, and four had barely grown into their wings. Worst of all, Argent was not in control of the clan and could not stay with the rest, he’d have to beg mercy and quarters from his new master. This was far from the strong gargoyle army nearly fifty strong that he’d undoubtedly promised to lead for the king.

Faun stepped out from the rookery. “Aureos, we have a problem.”

“What is it?”

Jasper peeked his head out from behind Faun’s wings. “Is it safe to come out now?” 

Aureos felt like a stone dropped into his stomach, and felt his eyes go wide. He had assumed the others had raided the rookery before they fled, had carried off the eggs and taken the hatchlings and fledglings that couldn’t fly with them to safety. Argent, Aureos saw his eyes light up with the same idea. He could claim the children as his new clan, and Aureos couldn’t let that happen, unbound and loyal to the king, or worse, use them to capture their fled parents. The guards… the guards could not witness this. With no warning he leapt at the guards bashing their heads together and knocking them out, before tossing them out the door and barricading it.

He snarled to his lieutenants, pointing at Argent. “Subdue him! Don’t harm him, but do not let him go!”

Gazelle and Roxy were all too willing to drag Argent to a chair at knifepoint, binding him with ropes and warning him to stay silent or they would happily gag him.

The children were still here, WHY were the children still here?! They were too young to be granted voices of their own in the clan. Regardless of who had sired or borne their egg, all hatchlings were raised by the whole clan except in certain instances where a parental voice was needed. Why had they been left behind after Sabelle bested him? There were no parents to speak for them, and technically many of them were now the children of a rival clan.

Lapis walked over to the door and examined it closely. “He used magic, a concealment and forgetting charm. Anyone who touched the door while it was closed forgot that there was even anything there. They might have even forgot they had children at all.” 

“If you are capable of it, claim as many fledglings, hatchlings, or eggs that you are comfortable with! We can’t leave them clanless and vulnerable to the traitors. We’ll figure out the rest later. Quickly! Daisy, Ryan, to me, and bring two eggs each!”

Argent was gagged as fast as possible. The other king’s men were pounding on the door, they didn’t have much time. “Hurry! We can’t keep them out for long, the king is nearly here!”

Not every gargoyle was fully suited for laying full claim and responsibility over younglings, especially since most of them were not even mated, and some were barely even considered adults. But none of them were willing to allow anything to happen to the eggs, hatchlings, and fledglings in the rookery. The littlest hatchlings were scared and crying, the fledglings mostly were shaking, and many asked the questions of why had they been left behind, with no satisfactory answers to be had. 

Corvis and Lapis, the only bonded pair left in their clan, immediately took as many eggs of differing ages as they could fit into their nest, a hatchling of Corvis’s brother, as well as the fledgling twins Sapphire and Emerald. 

Faun took two eggs and a fledgling named Gaius. Gazelle had two hatchlings, and Roxy had three eggs. Pegasi and Anglius, still nearly children themselves, rose to the challenge and took in two eggs apiece and a hatchling to raise between them. Charlie took the two oldest hatchlings, that had already been given their names, Rufus and Digby. Ametrine took two hatchlings, and Vertaina took two eggs, the hatchling which belonged to her sister Sabelle, and Jasper, who was her own fledgling. Annmarie saw the final egg left unclaimed, the egg Aureos was heading forwards for. 

“No Aureos, give it here. It is the youngest, the shell hasn’t even hardened yet. I will have plenty of time before it hatches to either adjust to the idea or return it to it’s true parents.” Aureos smiled and handed the egg over.

Anglius led everyone through the vow, which they faithfully repeated to the ones they had claimed.

“I claim you as kin unto me, I take you under my wing and welcome you into my clan, you shall learn from me and I from you, and together our clan shall grow stronger. For even beyond clan, we are family, we are kin, we are blood, and may nothing between us ever cause those bonds to be torn asunder.”

Each of them placing those claimed under their wings and a kiss to either their foreheads or shells. It was a rushed job, they had no time to celebrate the moment, no time to wind tails, scent and hold close for hours to cement the bonds and provide reassurance to the hatchlings and fledglings who mostly seemed troubled, scared, and unsure about what was going on.

The words were barely out of their mouths when the guards succeeded in breaking the door in and rushing inside, the king stepping inside calmly afterwards. He didn’t look happy to find Argent bound. “Release him!” He snarled to Aureos. “You should have greater respect for your leader!” 

Aureos sneered at Argent as he went over to cut his bonds. “With respect, your Majesty, Argent is leader of no one, he is not even part of our clan. Nothing against your servant, but he is not welcome among us, we merely trussed up a trespasser.”

“What? He assured me that if he bested you he would lead the clan!”

“That would be true, if he had, but besting me requires a declaration of challenge, and a chance to contest it, which usually ends in aerial combat, which never occurred with Argent. He would have also had to combat any other challengers for the the title, and I had a second in command and three lieutenants who would have been more than happy to challenge his right to lead the clan. He thought that by subduing us it would count the same, or that they couldn’t challenge him while under your control, but he was wrong. Argent never challenged my authority. I remain this clan’s alpha, and have been sworn renewed loyalty by every clan member here not one hour hence. If the King wishes Argent to try and fight me and then each of my lieutenants to the death for the title, we would be be more than happy to oblige His Majesty.” Aureos said with a delighted and viciously wicked sneer and glare at Argent, who, had he been able, would have blanched paler than the pale grey hue he already possessed naturally. The traitor was no skilled fighter, he couldn’t even attempt to challenge Charlie, let alone himself, and especially not himself when he was angry as hell and out for blood.

“That won’t be necessary. Where are the others? Bring them out.”

“There are no others in my clan, Your Majesty, this is the whole and sum of them.”

“What? I was promised a clan fifty strong!”

“Forty-five your majesty, including the eggs. If you are lucky a good third of them may hatch in your lifetime, two of the current hatchlings might become fledglings, and three of the fledglings should be capable of flying in the next twenty to thirty years, and shall have mastered the skill another twenty past that. Two fledglings are due to mature into an adult within eighty years.”

“Eighty YEARS?!”

“Gargoyles mature very slowly your majesty. I myself am nearly three thousand years old, and am still considered quite young amongst my kind.” It was very hard for Aureos to contain his smirk.

To say the king was displeased was an understatement he marched over and backhanded Argent across the face. “This is not what you promised me! You promised me fifty strong warriors, and instead you give me women, children,” he pointed viciously to Vertaina with her clouded eye and eye patch “The BLIND?! I should have you HANGED for this!”

“There WERE fifty fully grown warriors! I swear it! But Sabelle defeated Aureos, declared herself alpha, and fled with the others before they could be collared your Majesty, there was nothing I could do!”

“Then go after them!”

Pegasi grinned. “Is that an order your Majesty?”

“Ye-” the king began, “NO!” Argent shouted, interrupting. “No you can’t do that Sire, it would release them, you can ask nothing that interferes with clan matters, you can not order a clan alpha to try and overtake another clan! It would break the spell!”

“You are proving at every turn just how useless you are to me Argent, and how poorly planned out this scheme of yours was. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have you killed!” 

“I can still help you your majesty, I can help you control them, I know gargoyle law, and customs, I know all the ways they shall try and escape. I can still be of great value to you.”

The king seemed less than convinced of Argent’s claim and looked over his newest acquisition instead. “Why are some of them not bound? I ordered him to bind the others.”

“Children aren’t don’t qualify as part of the clan until they are of age and can speak on clan matters.” Aureos stated.

“I don’t care. Bind them! Bind every gargoyle immediately!”

They couldn’t resist, they couldn’t fight or rail against their bonds, and so they took up the discarded collars, cleaned off the blood, and locked them around the throats of their children, starting with the fledglings and then the hatchlings. Pegasi and Anglius took it a step further, they tackled Argent and locked a collar around his throat as well. After all, the king had ordered that EVERY gargoyle be bound, and forcing him to share in their fate was only justice in their eyes.

The king then ordered them to kneel and swear their fealty and they did, except the hatchlings who had no concept of such a thing. When he was satisfied he turned to leave, Aureos grinned vindictively at Argent.

“Your Majesty, Argent has been formally cast out, he is not allowed to remain with us any longer. Either he goes with you, or you leave him here and we will destroy him. What is your wish?”

The king’s face went nearly violet in his rage, and he swept out dramatically shouting “Argent!” who followed quickly after his new master.

The silence left behind was heavy, the few scarce hours left of the night were spent finishing cleaning up the mess they had made to deceive Argent and the king. Finally, near dawn, they were properly able to draw their new children close. They were able to fold them in wings, entwine tails, and press foreheads together, curl together in nests, scent and bond and kin claim properly. 

Aureos held Daisy and Ryan close, the eggs warmed between them, and shielding all of them with his wings. As the sky began to lighten he had Daisy and Ryan curl around the eggs, and he perched above his nest, wings spread, claws out and teeth bared. As the first light of dawn touched him and the gray stone sleep claimed him for another day, he vowed again to protect his own. They were all going to be clan, they were all going to survive this and be free again, he swore on his life.


	2. An Unexpected Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merlin was not expecting a lot of things, but he most definitely was not expecting to have to try and figure out how to steer a spaceship on the fly. He doesn't succeed very well at all.

**Fifteen years ago.**

  
  


Kingsman had a little known secret, it wasn’t just founded on the unclaimed inheritances of the upper crust. It had started out that way, and then as they were building and expanding what was now the Kingsman Headquarters, after acquiring their estate back from the military after World War 2, they had unearthed some things. Six “somethings” to be exact. Two small spacecrafts, a medium sized spacecraft, one much larger spaceship, an emergency escape pod, and a circular stone ring with symbols on it, broken into several large pieces and made of a previously unknown element. Each of the ships had housed the bodies of multiple casualties, from three different races of aliens that they could tell. The technologies had all been very advanced, but also very very different from each other. 

 

Kingsman had not been feeling very charitable towards the government at the time, after having the entire estate confiscated for military use for over six years, forcing them to relocate headquarters temporarily and hide many of their resources in their underground bunkers. They did not therefore feel inclined to share after barely getting their headquarters back and operational again, and didn’t wish to risk losing the find, and possibly their headquarters again, indefinitely. Thanks to them never reporting the find, Kingsman’s R&D department had enjoyed unlimited access to not only studying the alien technology, but also trying to reverse engineer it. Out of it they had developed and patented hundreds of things over the years, eventually bringing in billions annually on the patents alone. 

 

The ships had all been broken beyond repair, most of them in at least two pieces, even once the smaller ones had been reassembled, they couldn’t get any of them to work. His predecessors had studied all of the ships from top to bottom, but especially the largest, (and the only one fully intact) since their discovery, with never so much as a whirring hum no matter what they did. The largest ship could be used to power external devices, and had a huge self sustaining ecosystem in the center of it, whose purpose apparently was to provide food, filter water, and create oxygen for the ship's’ inhabitants, but that was about it. 

 

It harnessed solar, wind, and geothermal power automatically, they had no idea how, or even how it was stored, but they thought those were just the emergency backup power systems to keep things like life support going, as well as the lights and temperature controls turned on. They were entirely convinced the ship ran on something entirely different. They suspected it was either dark matter or maybe even a form of the unknown material of the broken ring. The ship had ten sets of living quarters, and a control panel that could be operated by just one person, though there was seating for others. There had been no visible weapons they could find, unlike the other ships which had been heavily armed. The weapons from the other ships had still been functional and had also proved the easiest to reverse engineer.

 

Merlin’s predecessor had studied the largest ship extensively since its discovery, as its technologies seemed even more advanced than the other three ships, and was the most resistant to try and replicate. In fact they hadn’t been able to successfully reproduce anything from the largest ship other than some of the plants in what they referred to as the ‘greenhouse’ part of the ship. One of those plants had become invaluable to Kingsman, it yielded the bulletproof fibers that they wove into the fabrics for their agent’s suits once processed. Kingsman had specifically begun growing and processing a large private crop of it ever since they had managed to harvest seeds for it, and their farmlands for the crop were more well protected than the national gold reserve.

 

But the current Merlin was the only one who had gone the extra mile and actually moved INTO the ship, since it had been deemed inert and safe ages ago with no weapons to speak of. Well, until he had moved in anyway. He couldn’t help it, he had fallen in love with the ship since the first time he had seen it, and the seamless blend of nature and technology was very soothing to him. 

 

He had lived in the ship for going on twenty five years now, and even though it was still located on the Kingsman estate, it was most definitely home in every way that mattered. It was an elongated oval shape which had three levels, and each ringed the central self contained ecosystem, a translucent cylindrical column that connected all three levels right through the middle of the ship which produced oxygen, grew food, recycled and filtered water, composted waste and gave a recreational respite as a garden. 

 

The first level was mostly open, granting access to the ecosystem, and where things like a communal kitchen and eating area were located, along with what Merlin was pretty sure was a food replicator, the ship’s recycling system, and a digital library Merlin might have sold his soul to be able to understand. There was a meeting room down there he had turned into his personal home entertainment theater. 

 

The narrowest part of the front of the oval in the second level was where the ship’s bridge was and what appeared to be a majority of the ship’s technology in general. The rest of the second level contained the personal living quarters that Merlin had long ago cleared out and turned into his own library, office, workspace, armory, and separated and secured storage areas for everything from computer parts, to basic elements, as well as survival rations in the case of an emergency. He tended to spend the most time on the second level as it was where the labs and bedrooms were. The third level had been the cargo bay, an observatory, and a room he hadn’t been able to get into yet, but which just might be the engine room. 

 

The roof did pull back to flood the entire ecosystem with natural light when available. He had added his own special plants to the indoor garden over the years, Tea, coffee, his own vegetable and herb garden, and it grew some of the best produce Merlin had ever had. There were nectar producing flowers, roses, even flowering crops, to keep the small stingless beehive and butterflies happy and pollinating. There was a lagoon with fish, a small waterfall, and even a table with two chairs. It was his own personal haven, and he was very protective of it.

 

After the worst of the chaos from V-day was over, Merlin needed to defrag for awhile and had fully stocked his cupboards and stock rooms with raw materials, then locked himself away in his self sustaining tower. After two weeks spent gardening, reading, relaxing, smelting some small batches of metals, hacking and downloading five hundred terabytes of movies, music, and books from libraries, archives, research facilities, and the internet just because he could, he had gotten a wee bit restless, and started tinkering about with the ships’ consoles and wiring again, the same as he had done a thousand times before. He had been attempting to crack the code of the circuitry systems for at least ten years now. Trying to get something to work in the ship had been the pet project of every Merlin since its discovery, and he was no exception. This time though, he had found a tiny chip that was cracked and burned out, under the control chair of all things, and he had duplicated it as best he could from scratch and replaced it. 

 

Within two seconds every light on every console was bright and glowing, engines were humming, and just as Merlin got out a triumphant shout and laugh, the doors abruptly shut, locked, and the ship took off, straight up from what he could gather, because to the left would have been through the mansion, to the right, back, or forward would have been through the woods, and down, well he would have ended up in the hangar bay and been pissed off for MONTHS. He admits that the inertial dampeners were impressive as hell, but he was flying blind, he couldn’t see anything. Merlin scrambled into the control chair hoping to figure out quickly how to steer, and hopefully land. The moment he sat down, another larger and far more complicated looking control panel materialized and rose from the floor between his feet.

 

“What is this, bloody Flight of the Navigator? Come on. How the hell do you steer this thing?”

 

The spaceship didn’t remotely handle like a jet at all, though after hitting nearly every button on the control panel, the wall across from him went transparent, and he could see where he was going, which didn’t help at all, since that just showed him that he was currently passing  _ The Moon _ much too close for comfort.

 

“Bloody hell- Come on, come on, work with me-” He turned something which sent him careening back the way he had come, only now he was headed straight into the ocean at a thousand kilometers per hour, right over a very rough looking storm system. Merlin barely managed to pull the nose up before hitting the water, but that didn’t stop the huge wave crashing over the ship and pushing them into the ocean. He was still travelling at breakneck speed and pulled back up into the air and narrowly avoided the Eiffel Tower two seconds later before managing to hit an altitude height. Whatever he pushed next must have been the turbo boost because he was suddenly shooting straight ahead and everything was streaking by too fast for his eye to catch. It took him over ten minutes before he found the way to slow down again, but it was barely two seconds before he slammed into the asteroid belt and dear gods trying to dodge huge chunks of space rock that were supposed to be thousands of miles apart but much more seemed like he was trying to play Frogger during rush hour, was not a pleasant experience at ALL. 

 

The few controls he had somewhat figured out became meaningless when he accidentally pushed instead of pulled and sent the ship into a head over heels continuous flip, then over corrected, forcing it into a barrel roll. It was extremely disconcerting to be spinning at high velocity yet no longer have gravity or inertia be an issue to deal with at all, and the concept of how he perceived directions to become completely meaningless and irrelevant. 

 

By the time he found the brakes and managed to slow down and stop, he realized he had originally managed to turn INTO the asteroid belt, facing against the current, which explained the Frogger scenario. It became much easier once he cleared the belt entirely and stopped to catch his breath, which took a good ten minutes. 

 

The vast emptiness surrounding him was somehow crushing, like a great weight sitting on his chest. He had felt something similar once, when he had been lost at sea for a week. The vastness of the ocean with no land in sight and his insignificance to it, was much the same as being out in space, but space was on a far greater scale. There had still been water, air, and mass around him then, and he knew approximately where he was. Here, it was a yawning void in every direction, empty space all around. Merlin’s mind couldn’t even comprehend it. Thankfully no one was around to see him go wobbly and have a full fledged panic attack. 

 

He did manage to close the screen over the window before trying to put himself back together, which helped. After getting a string of curses out over just how badly he was fucked, he was able to pull himself together and get into survival mode. He was the Merlin of Kingsman damnit, he wasn’t going to go out like this, stuck millions of kilometers from home and everyone he ever cared about never knowing what had become of him.

 

First things first, he needed to make a log of everything he did, and needed to mark everything he discovered. He needed to learn how to pilot and fly a spaceship that was thousands, perhaps even millions of years old, with all of the code and instructions written in an incomprehensible and untranslatable alien tongue. There was plenty of room out here for him to experiment without hitting or hurting anyone or anything. He had all the time he needed to navigate back home safely. 

 

He turned on every camera to record his movements, he started up a video journal to record his progress, he turned on some music to fill up the empty space, set alarms to keep him regulated on a schedule, then pulled out his dry erase markers, his whiteboard, his pens, his sticky notes, and got to work. It was difficult to navigate when you are literally sitting out in an endless black void, entirely surrounded in every possible direction by stars and constellations whose patterns no longer seemed remotely familiar, and which were possibly lifetimes beyond your reach. He did find the Sun however, so at least he had a starting point. The Sun seemed much smaller out here, but he could at least identify the asteroid belt, and possibly even Mars. 

  
  


It took him three days to figure out the basic controls and their functions. Two days after that he had somewhat worked out the navigation system controls, a great feat in his opinion seeing as they were labelled in an alien script, but he could at least identify the current solar system and chart a course. Four days after that he had become proficient in piloting the ship on the basic level. He took his time, created a computer program that recorded his movements and translated them in relation to the ship’s functions. The language the ship was in didn’t matter if he could make a rosetta stone. There were three universal languages he knew that should cross any alien language barrier, Mathematics, Physics, and Elements. If he could figure out any one of those things in relation to the ship, he’d be fine. He was currently navigating it at what he referred to as ‘full impulse speed’ towards Mars’s orbit, which he should reach in about nine months, since he wasn’t willing to touch the ‘sub-light’ or ‘warp’ engine buttons which had started him on this misadventure. He also discovered that the ship was still close enough to Earth to somehow still connect to his private work servers by satellite, and he made a detailed report to Harry that he was alive and well and slowly on his way back. 

 

In return Harry sent him global reports of Merlin’s escapade as a UFO that was very well documented thanks to the surplus of camera phones these days. People had tried to trace the origin point of where it had started from, and had only managed ‘possibly the UK’, but most hadn’t seen him until after he had looped the Moon.

The P.S. on the email made him smile. 

 

“ _ P.S. I have been commissioned to inform you that when you get back, Eggsy would please like for you to take him for a ride, and I quote: ‘I didn’t know Merlin’s house was a spaceship! That is wicked sick! Bruv you gotta convince him to lemme have a ride in it, that is the coolest thing I’ve ever fuckin seen! I’ll buy him a drink, or ten drinks even, heck a whole bottle of his fave, just ask him to beam me the fuck up and joyride around the Moon or something. PLEASE? _ ”

 

With something to look forward to, besides trying to figure out how to make the bloody thing land gently, he headed for home. Once he reached Mars in about nine months, it would be nearly three months back home, because he was travelling faster than current spaceships, but still very slowly in relation to what the ship could do. In the meantime, he distracted himself and caught up on reading and watching the surplus of movies and TVshows he’d been missing episodes on, and he kept the view window firmly closed.

 

He made it a grand total of three days before he hit the sublight button and covered the remaining distance to Mars in about an hour. Merlin actually did a victory lap of Mars when he reached it. By that time it had fully sunk in that he was officially the furthest travelled human in space, he had made it past the asteroid belt, he was the first man to loop Mars, he was the first human to travel at both sublight and light speeds and survive the experience, and he was piloting a freaking SPACESHIP. How cool was that? 

 

He took it easy on the remaining distance to home, not wishing to overshoot his goal, since he still didn’t know how he was going to land, especially not undetected. He parked in orbit, waiting for night to descend on the UK before heading in to land. 

 

It was an hour before nightfall near London, when Merlin smelled something burning. He looked over just in time to see the main control panel start shooting out sparks. Within moments of noticing it, the ship was malfunctioning, the prime console was on fire, and his ‘emergency brakes’ were out. He started free falling, and worst of all, he had no way to stop it. In the confusion he must have hit something because suddenly the earth was flickering past him nearly like it was blinking in and out, then once Merlin busted open the control panel and blasted the thing with CO2 from a fire extinguisher, the ship went dead in the water and then tilted forward and then entirely upside down as it fell to earth. Five seconds later the lights went out, every system went down, and Merlin had no way to slow down or stop, and when the systems went down, so did the gravity control. 

 

Thankfully he had installed a seatbelt and harness system ages ago on the control chair just in case. Merlin launched himself at the control chair, and strapped himself in. The manual steering was the only thing he had left, and he pulled the nose up, praying the ship would hold for an uncontrolled descent into a planet’s atmosphere without shields. He came in hot and fast, but he had already been aiming for England. He soon realized that wouldn’t be enough. The most he could do was an emergency landing, and he didn’t know what would be worse, landing on land or water. Either way, he didn’t want to lose his house or his life, but if a decision had to be made, his life was still more valuable to him. 

 

He did manage to decelerate enough to not get torn up in the atmosphere by circling the planet at break neck speeds and a height where he could still distinguish countries and avoid things like airplanes. Then, as he crept lower and lower to earth, and was bracing himself for impact, for five seconds some sort of emergency system activated. Those five seconds saved his life as the shields came up and took the brunt of the landing, gouging a deep trench in the earth for well over a kilometer before he finally managed to stop somewhere near Cornwall if he wasn’t mistaken. How he had miraculously gotten to the correct country he didn’t question, just thanked his lucky stars for that one small bit of luck. If he had landed in say Russia or got forbid North Korea, he would have a far worse time of it. 

 

The ship was half buried in earth, but he was far more concerned about being detected, arrested, and taken in for tests at the moment. He attempted to call headquarters but all he got was static, not even a dial tone. It was the middle of the night and the door hatch was still locked and sealed as well as buried, he’d have to try and get enough systems running to open the top hatch then. He was not looking forward to trying to explain this to the various governments and agencies. Any sort of covert excuse was already well and truly blown, so he might as well just sit tight until they could extract him, and then focus on damage control.

 

It wasn’t until the next day that Merlin realized that something was terribly wrong. No one had shown up, even though his landing should have been well documented. The port window on the upper observatory was able to be manually moved and he realized that wherever he had landed, was not where he had wanted to be. He was in a bit of woodland and had a view of a village not too far away, but the roofs had actual THATCH on them, and the people moving towards him, throwing rocks and carrying actual torches and pitchforks, those were DEFINITELY people from the wrong century, not renaissance faire performers. 

 

Okay so maybe that earth flickering thing had been him going back in time? SHIT. He closed the shield back over top and ducked into one of his workrooms. He grabbed his VR controller and visor and tapped the ports to bring the modified roomba online. “Time to do some crowd control.” The little robot came online and moved forward, and Merlin guided it to the emergency port he’d built ages ago. The hoard of villagers, or should he say the MOB of villagers, all stopped when the little roomba rolled up the incline. It was rather hilarious to see their reaction as the three buzz saw blades came out from either side and in front, and the little robot sliced through a small sapling that was in its way with hardly any effort, then proceeded to advance threateningly. A canister of tear gas was the only other thing needed to make them all run away screaming in fright. After the cannister was spent, the roomba put away its blades, picked up the spent cannister and returned to the ship, heading straight to its docking bay after dropping the canister in Merlin’s recyclables. 

 

“Well done 42.” 

 

The next threat was a bit more serious. As this apparently wasn’t just the wrong century, but an entirely different reality. The asshole outside was beginning to levitate Merlin’s whole ship, while holding a  _ staff _ of all things. At least he got Merlin out of the ditch, which was fine, but then the jerk did something that started to try and rip open the hull. 

 

“Oh no, not to MY house you don’t…”

 

Hulktimus Prime, his precious battle bot, was sent out immediately to deal with the intruder, a long, segmented battle droid able to disassemble into several fully functional smaller battle bots, and to come together and transform into a two meter tall robot with a set of 300 psi hydraulic crushers, a speed of twenty kilometers an hour, an electronic roar of one hundred and twenty decibels that got higher in pitch by the second and reached a tone that could break glass, and should all else fail, a machine gun with six hundred hollow point rounds. One look at the huge metal machine transforming, roaring, and charging right for him, and the Sorcerer? Mage? Wizard? Merlin had no idea what to call him, but the man was running for the hills regardless. He was out of the ditch, but that also left the ship more vulnerable to attack.

 

He was left alone for just three days, and he never came out of his ship, but he did manage to turn it halfway, by getting it to rotate just a few feet before the engines keeled out again. Giving him a defensible position with the door facing the trench. He had also found a cloaking device, that at least halfway worked, he thinks. On the second day of his respite he discreetly launched a camera drone with regular and night vision capabilities through the droid portal so he could take a look around at his surroundings. He didn’t know if he was in the England of this world or not, but he did know that it was very much the wrong century. Several centuries wrong really. Judging by clothing and dialect, he was around somewhere near the 1100’s technologically and linguistically, and the higher he went the worse it looked. Because the cathedral in the distance looked somewhat if not entirely familiar, but there was also a band of soldiers headed straight towards him, armed heavily on their war horses and looking like they meant serious business. He couldn’t fight the whole world and the ever increasing forces of it. Time for plan B. 

 

He worked on reprogramming one of his latest inventions overnight, hoping it would help him, because he knew a lot of things, but tenth century languages was not one of them. Thankfully he had downloaded ten libraries for shits and giggles. By eight that night there were three scouts on the perimeter, and Merlin was highly tempted to blind them with flood lights and threaten them over the loudspeaker system. He refrained, mostly because he was busy. He made sure it was the most boring night possible for them. Nothing moved, blinked, or made a single sound, and the shields stayed up and the doors stayed sealed. One of them was even brave enough to come right up to it and touch the ship to the hissed warnings of his companions. Nothing happened. They were well away from the droid portal, so he sent out Elric to keep an eye on them, should they start trying to damage his house, the droid would attack.

 

Elric was a battle bot armed with several blades and a modest sized napalm flame thrower that could launch burning fuel for twenty meters. He was also fully armored, all terrain, able to verticaly scale metal structures thanks to electro magnets, and he was the toughest one to take down. The scouts were not armed with the night vision scope that Elric was, so they couldn’t see him, they could however hear him moving around, and retreated to a safer place. Elric rolled to the top of the ship, where he could maintain a defensible swivel position. The last thing Merlin needed was anyone breaking his ship even more than it already was.

 

Merlin continued his project until nearly dawn, and hoped it would work, because it looked like the army would be here by ten. When the scouts left he launched three more drones and brought Elric back in. he was shocked to find that Chester King of all fucking people was leading the army, and he had a fucking CROWN on his head. Well SHIT.

 

“I’m  _ definitely _ not in Kansas anymore.”

 

Thankfully, the translator worked as hoped and when the army descended it was to Merlin sitting against the cloaked door and ready to dash inside if things turned out badly. He was discreetly armed to the teeth, his entire fleet of a dozen robots were strategically placed around the perimeter to protect him, the drones were above him providing him eyes in the sky to detect an ambush, and if all else failed, he had long ago armed the ship as well, and since they were on an entirely separate system, they worked just fine.

 

Needless to say they were all a bit surprised to see a single man calmly sitting there with a rather impressive looking breakfast before him, wearing rather strange clothing, and with some sort of strange metal box on the table beside him. Merlin however, just continued eating his breakfast and drinking his tea.

 

Chester came to the front and while astride his horse called out a greeting.

 

“Good morning.” The translation box spoke in Percival’s gentle and cultured tone. Proving that it did in fact work. 

 

“Good morning. You seem to be off to battle. Whom do you intend on fighting today?” Merlin replied, and watched Chester’s eyes go wide as the box replied flawlessly in his own tongue. Thankfully there had been about twenty dozen complete language dictionaries, including ancient dialects of the most common tongues  he had acquired in his data acquisition. It had merely been a matter of downloading them after he had located them, and installing a speaker. He was working on a mobile wearable version as well.

 

“There have been reports that this great shining metal thing fell out of the sky and strange creatures came out of it and attacked my people. Naturally I have come to investigate the truth of the matter, and judging by that trench, the rumors are true.”

 

“Only because they attacked me first. The first group came with fire and bows and stones, a mob set to attack me in my own home for no reason, the second one picked my house up without permission and tried tearing the roof open without even attempting to introduce himself first. Of course I chased them off, but I didn’t harm anyone. I cannot bear rude people. No harm came to your three scouts last night did it? They were here from sundown to sun up without a single problem. One was even bold enough to lay his hand on the door, but still didn’t knock. Perhaps they thought me asleep, it being so late at night after all, and that is why they didn’t introduce themselves?”

 

Even from here Merlin could see the scouts blanch pale. They had obviously thought themselves to have been undetected. Chester however could take a hint.

 

“I am the king of these lands, who are you, whom do you serve, and where do you get your powers from? Are you some sort of foreign mage or do you serve the Devil?”

 

“I’m Merlin. I’m not a mage, I’m a wizard, or an Istari if you like, one of the lower choirs of angels. Just one of Gods’ many little problem solvers. I do not serve the Devil, my powers are entirely my own. As to whom I serve, well, the answer won’t mean anything to you. I do not serve one of your rivals if that makes it any easier on you, and I shall never call any mortal man my master. I’m here for the usual reasons, to stop a war, make a kingdom great, and prevent someone’s death. You wouldn’t happen to know a Chester King would you?”

 

The small talk took hours, Chester questioned him relentlessly about a prophecy and Merlin was honest with him. In his experience, the fastest way to make a prophecy happen was to try and prevent it from happening, and the only way to stop it was to ignore it or take it as caution which you prepared for, but not truth. If you had done anything to stop it the wheel had already been set in motion and couldn’t be stopped again. 

 

Chester hadn’t liked that answer at all, and Merlin could see that this Chester was just as dangerous as his counterpart, and also had an army backing him. However, after a few demonstrations of his ‘powers’ all of which were just fancy chemistry reactions, his promise to help Chester avoid getting killed, as well as his desire to make the kingdom the most advanced and prosperous the world had ever seen, the king fully believed that God had sent Merlin to secure his reign and save his life. 

 

Apparently he said Merlin was in this prophecy. He didn’t know what to think of that, but whatever. Chester was obviously interested in Merlin’s abilities and what he might know about his fate, and very much wanted Merlin as his advisor and bodyguard. Because who doesn’t want a powerful pet wizard sent by God to protect them? Merlin’s only demands were that he would continue to live in his own house, his advice to make the kingdom better must always be heeded and implemented immediately, Chester couldn’t ever ask or order him to kill, build or use weapons, or to participate in war in any way or for any reason, and no one was allowed to interrupt Merlin when he was working. After all, everything he did was going to be for Chester’s and his kingdom’s benefit, a delay could be detrimental to him saving Chester’s life.

 

Once the king and Merlin had shaken hands on the matter, Merlin gave out a short, sharp whistle, and the battle bots abandoned their posts and made their way back into the ship past the startled soldiers, the drones coming to land one by one on the bots, to hitch a ride inside, to the wide eyed stares of Chester and the others. 

 

“I’m quite glad that you were polite and I didn’t have to defend myself. You passed the first test. ‘Manners Maketh Man’ after all.”

 

It struck fear into all of their hearts, that this wizard wasn’t just defending them, but testing their worthiness to be defended as well.

 

Moving the ship was a near Herculean task, but with the aid of a series of rolling logs, and the small random bursts of low hovering and movement he could pull out of the engines, they made it to Chester’s castle in a month. Merlin insisted on parking his house outside the walls, past the back of the castle, and beside a small spring and stream above the township that the drones had found but no others lived by. Clean water was a precious luxury in these times, and Merlin wasn’t going to take any chances. The king was willing to grant him the land for his use, but Merlin bought it outright, he wanted ten acres of land as well as the spring and stream, a pittance compared to what even a merchant had, and that he wanted to pay for with a handful of one ounce gold ingots that he had made from reclaimed electronics and smelted himself. The king gave him ten acres for every piece, leaving him with fifty acres of land, the water, as well as ten serfs to help him however he wished. Considering two of those serfs were this world’s counterparts to Percival and the former Lancelot, though several years younger, he couldn’t say no.

 

With the lack of cleanliness, hygiene standards, soap, proper preservation, or refrigeration that he was used to, and knew the importance of, Merlin was willing to eat very little of the feast thrown in his honor, and drank nothing except the pure filtered water he had filled his camelbak with and wore under his clothes. He wasn’t willing to risk dysentery, cholera, typhus, lead, or food poisoning over dinner, especially when there were no modern hospitals or doctors within a thousand years of this place. 

 

He had eaten beforehand and pretended to drink the kings’ best wine. He filled plate after plate of food and bit by bit handed the contents of them out to the beggars in the corners of the halls, who were obviously immune and tolerant, to the point that this food was a huge step up in quality for them from their regular diet. Merlin also stuck close to the windows to avoid the stench of unwashed bodies. He didn’t know how long he’d be stuck here, so he’d best do what he could to survive it.

 

When he got home he immunized himself thoroughly with his stores, and began developing immunizations for whatever he might encounter on this world. It was easy to get a few vials of blood from some old beggars for a couple of coins each. If they had lived this long, they were just what Merlin needed.

 

He set about trying to fix his ship while his serfs built crude wooden and thatch huts so they could get to work faster. Merlin told them there was no rush for anything beyond a public garden to feed themselves and the animals with for the time being. He scanned the land and his resources, then planned his land properly to not only keep up appearances, but also to provide the best he could for his workers. And he’d start by making sure none of them got ill. He set down the laws that all of them would be required to live by and strictly adhere to at all times. 

 

  1. Everyone in every household must bathe fully no less than every other day, once a day was preferable, twice a day (before and after work) would be ideal.   
  

  2. All animals were to be housed fully separate from their homes, their pens and stables cleaned daily. The only acceptable household animals were dogs, cats, and small singing birds.   
  

  3. If you were ill or injured you were not to work at all and were to come to Merlin for treatment and instructions immediately. All home based cures had to be approved by him, and a whole list of ingredients were forbidden, especially lead, mercury, and poisonous plants.  
  

  4. All garbage, waste, and sewage was to be taken to the compost pit as often as possible and no less than thrice a week.  
  

  5. Clothes were to be washed after the second wearing.  
  

  6. They would work sun up to sundown, with three, one hour long breaks through the day, work four days a week, ending at sundown on Thursday and resuming at sun up on Monday. The interim time was their own, to work, rest, or worship however and whomever they saw fit.   
  

  7. Thresh and straw lined floors were forbidden, as were thatch roofs once their permanent homes were completed.  
  

  8. Everyone was to tend their own little garden and grow as many fruits and vegetables as possible.  
  

  9. They each had to learn proper cleanliness and hygiene, and adhere at all times to Merlin’s standards.  
  

  10. They must all spend at least two hours a day learning to read and write, save for the Sabbath, should they observe it.  




 

He had all of their clothes replaced with new. Each of them were examined for disease and lice after fully bathing, and treated for any findings, all body hair and in a few cases head hair were shaved in order to deal with the lice and get rid of it fully. All of them would also be immunized as soon as he had enough innoculations for everyone.

 

Their permanent homes were going to be right against the wall, or where the wall to his property would be once he had good stone quarried and brought there and stone masons build the walls and their houses. They were the most modern houses they had ever seen too, stone floors, two stories, insulated walls stuffed with straw and mud, fully closed and insulated wooden slat roof with fired clay shingles, detached barn for each of them and their own animals.    
  
Each home had a small wood burning oven, fireplace with chimney, sink that had running water from a well pump, a pantry, larder, root cellar, a fire heated stone tub that drained from the bottom into the irrigation channels for the garden, and an enclosed, indoor toilet that drained to a sewer. The sewer was rinsed out by the sink drains and emptied out into the stone lined compost heap on the other side of the land, to be used as fertilizer after it cured and decomposed along with all of the other waste. 

 

The second floor had carved runners set into the ceiling with a bunch of wooden slats which could be slid into them and used to divide the space into four separate bedrooms or any other configuration of rooms which suited the tenets best. Each family was given a pair of goats, ten chickens, and a sow with piglets to get started with, along with the use of either horse or oxen and a plow if they were farmers.

 

To Merlin the houses were simple structures, and yes far too modern for the era, but dammit if he had to live here, he wasn’t going to have his groundwater polluted by sewage or his servants dying of perfectly preventable diseases. He had always taken care of the ones he was responsible for.

 

The amount of builders he hired was truly obscene, but he wanted all of his buildings done, and done fast, and considering how little the people were paid in this time, he could more than afford it. They and any other workers they brought were also forced to adhere to his rules of cleanliness, no matter how ridiculous they found them. He built a waterwheel, a windmill with a granary, and then had pump wells built. No one had any idea what he was doing, but when the king saw the ‘extravagant’ homes Merlin was building for his servants, he was very confused, especially since Merlin was not building his own home, content to continue living in the vessel which had brought him here. He was a strange one.

 

Within a year Merlin’s seeds had already begun being sowed. Literally and figuratively. His people were the cleanest and healthiest people in town, to the point they had begun to notice the filthy squalor everyone else was living in. Merlin’s rules not only were enforced on his own lands, but also had begun to spread by word of mouth to the court and among the peasants. Merlin’s people were not like other serfs, they didn’t till their master’s lands for him, because apparently he didn’t eat. Or so the rumour went. Their gardens were for themselves and the field they had was for the animals. Their work week went towards making good, inexpensive soap of many scents, combs, fine toothed nit combs, scrub brushes, toothbrushes, and dry toothpaste made from baking soda and mint. He was also working on making inexpensive straight razors.

 

People saw how well his servants lived, and wanted it for themselves. The extremely useful modern conveniences became all the rage because they saved so much daily time and effort due to not having to haul water, or leave their homes entirely to go wash clothes, cook food, or bake bread, giving them so much extra time for other things. 

 

The novelty of being so well off that you could even afford to pamper your servants to the point they only had to work four days a week, caught on with the nobility and royalty, as well as the luxury of having stone chimneys, running water, heated baths and a flushing commode indoors. The rich wanted them for their own households in order to show off.

 

Merlin didn’t care how it played out, as long as it worked. He put his words in the king's’ ear and his plans in the builders hands with strict instructions on how to build sewers, and not contaminate water sources, and how to segregate animals away from humans, and all the other basic standards of cleanliness. ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ became a very catchy saying for the church, and when all else failed, equating dirtiness to being a barbarian worked wonders. He carefully cultivated that attitude until it was reprehensible for anyone to be seen as even having dirty servants. To be clean, your entire household, lodgings, and people must also be spotless. Public baths were installed for free, where anyone could bathe or wash clothes, day or night. Sanitation workers who hauled away garbage, refuse, and other filth were highly respected and well paid. 

 

He had several projects running like clockwork, all while he studied his ship and repaired what damage he could. By the end of the year he could use most of the systems, but the engines were completely dead and it would take a lot of time to fix them since he didn’t have the parts and components, and the originals were too badly damaged to replicate or see how they worked.

 

When a child fell into the river and drowned that summer, Merlin thought nothing of jumping in, hauling them out, and giving them CPR, hoping it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t, and the kid came back to life. By the looks on everyone’s faces, he may as well have raised Lazarus from the grave. No one was willing to question his methods after that, and he became the King’s most trusted advisor, and privy to most of his and the court’s dirty little secrets. In his free time, he gave the children swimming lessons.

 

Merlin nearly had a heart attack when he saw that Eggsy was a Gargoyle, and then he saw all of the other familiar faces also enslaved by Chester, and the in disgrace Argent. It took a long time but Merlin endeared himself to the clan, got very close, quietly, and swore to help them however he could, and he kept that promise. According to Gazelle, Merlin was the only truly human friend they had ever had. He was determined to never make them regret it.

 

He had met them when Chester had brought him on one of the guard’s frequent visits. His eyes had gone wide since he had never seen the like of them before. When Chester explained about the way he had ‘tamed’ them into his service, luckily only they had seen the deadly look of disgust and hatred on the wizard’s face, and apparently they had approved. If looks could kill, Chester would have been slaughtered that very moment, him and all of his guards.

 

He never asked if they could do anything for him, that was exactly what every other human had ever done to them and he could tell. Instead he invited them to tea and asked how he could help. They had worked out together how to thwart nearly every order, had put in the kings’ ear over and over again why doing it a different way would be more effective, until the king nearly ceased giving the gargoyles orders altogether. They became kept pets instead of beasts of burden set out on every little errand and to take care of problems which went against their nature. 

 

Merlin dazzled Chester with new inventions, keeping his attention off of them, and made what little standing Argent had managed to regain with the king absolutely worthless, until Argent was all but a whipped dog that Chester barely tolerated in his presence at all. They were still bound, but Merlin had been told he had nearly made it bearable by being their friend and ally over the years. The most he had asked of any of them was to take a message back to a few of the others in the clan after one of them visited him. 

 

With the magical collars still in place there was little else he could do at the moment. Many of the gargoyles were already well read and would come help him in some small capacity, especially with experiments to try and get rid of the collars. He hadn’t succeeded yet, but he had run down their magic far far faster than anyone had expected. Another twenty five years and they would be drained fully instead of the five hundred they would have easily lasted before. Merlin was determined to cut that number in half, and when he told them that Eggsy had embraced him, and told him ‘I never thought I would trust or befriend a human, or a wizard. Perhaps you truly are an angel.” Merlin had shared the truth that he was just a mortal man, and all of his ‘magic’ was just technology and science from the world he was from and he had told the king he was an angel from the heavens to keep himself alive. They had respected him even more after that, because he had trusted them in turn. Finding out about magic had blown his mind, and he noped the heck away from it for about a month before his curiosity got the better of him and he began studying it, trying to figure it out, and more often than not ended up growling “But that isn’t how physics WORKS!” Before going off on some long winded tangent none of the others could understand.

 

By the third year he had resigned himself to the fact that he was stuck, fully stuck because he would literally have to rebuild the entire propulsion system from scratch if he could, and reprogram the engine. He did however figure out the basics of the replicator. He could get food, and was working on trying to program circuitry, but he still needed to find the design schematics that were still somewhere in the ship’s databases that he hadn’t found yet. He distributed basic penicillin to cure a few common diseases that year and saved hundreds of lives that might not have made it otherwise. They all but saw him as a god, which he vehemently denied. He possessed a bit of God’s wisdom and knowledge of how things worked, that’s all, and was there to teach others.

 

Merlin had created dozens of jobs on keeping the cities and the country clean by that point, and his ways were proven correct when plague hit other nearby countries, the ones which had most openly mocked and scoffed at Merlin as a charlatan, but left Chester’s lands alone entirely. After that, his ideas spread to the other countries like wildfire, and Chester’s lands expanded to conquer two of the weakened countries who had lost their army and several of their nobles to the plague, which kept the king well pleased with Merlin’s work, and provided him a second set of lands in each of the new territories, two hundred serfs, fifty guardsmen, and ordered fifty of the brightest minds in his court to learn anything they could from Merlin whenever he felt like teaching them. 

 

He sat them down in a hastily built classroom, gave them tablets with basic instructions and access to his science and medical library on the translated to Latin setting, which was thankfully still a thing, and told them to forget everything they thought they knew before, because it was most likely wrong. He took questions twice a day, and when they were suitably trained, forced them to acquire two apprentices each to pass their knowledge onto others.

 

It’s little wonder that with as busy as he kept he barely even noticed that Chester’s wife left him, other than to note the absolutely foul mood the man was in for months, especially when he couldn’t find her. He declared himself divorced in order to save face, and married again a year later. Merlin attended but didn’t really care. He avoided politics as much as possible.

 

Merlin took a break and channelled his frustration at his beloved hunk of junk into cultivating and producing flax, and different varieties of hemp in great quantities, so that they were readily available to the poorer classes, since a majority of the resources on Chester’s original lands had been mining and timber, and the newly conquered territories were rich and established farmlands. With Merlin’s assistance, hemp farms became a booming trade as soft and durable hemp clothing became all the rage, especially in the summers, which was worlds cooler than fully wool clothing, and easier to acquire than expensive linen. It was also so widely available in just a few years that even the poor could afford to wear it. Hemp farms also took off for it’s variety of uses, and textile factories focused on processing the different varieties for seed, medicine, food, oil, rope, paper, cloth, and building materials according to Merlin’s strict instructions.

 

He ‘invented’ other modern farming equipment by still making it man or beast powered, and improving people's’ diets by introducing advanced agricultural practices and crop rotation to increase yield to the point that not only were fruits and vegetables readily available in great quantities, but they were selling the excess to neighboring countries.

 

It kept him busy for awhile, and the king happy, but he was more homesick than ever, especially once he realized that he no longer needed the translator to understand people.

 

The next time he was extremely frustrated with his nearly impossible to repair spaceship, he tackled medicinal practices, and the people latched onto what he was saying after all of his previous successes. Nearly every physician was debunked, poisonous treatments were thrown out, and he had finally gotten to the point where he could introduce immunizations, well, ‘magical potions that could keep most people from getting terrible diseases’, on a wide scale basis thanks to the replicator’s help in making things like needles, glass bottles, and proper storage methods. He travelled the country for a year, giving required immunizations and made sure that several of his now well trained workers were dispensed and stationed to the various towns and were responsible for making sure that everyone would get their yearly shots. Infant mortality rates dropped to a third in the first year, and that number was cut in half the next year. Other countries were begging for Merlin to share these miracle cures with them as well. 

 

He did the next best thing until he could open a factory to make nothing but vaccines. He built libraries on the borders of each kingdom, neutral, protected, and open to anyone who wished to learn, for free. The books couldn’t leave the facility, because they were tablets, hard set into desks, and ran on copies of Merlin’s private servers and data library, well an edited and condensed version of it anyway, things they could understand. Each library had room for two hundred desks, ten classrooms, and ten teachers/librarians stationed in each one, to guide others and teach people to read and write. 

 

Doctors flooded in, and were taught REAL medicine, anatomy, and science, true medicinal plants and proper dosages. He still kept up the whole ‘One of the hosts of angels’ thing and was believed because of the sheer amount of unknown knowledge and technology he possessed which did nothing but save lives and improve their quality of living. 

 

He missed good wine, beer, and whiskey, so he advanced brewing techniques into the most successful wineries and distilleries and then reaped the rewards just so he could advance more and more and more projects.

 

He forced humanity past nearly a thousand years of ignorance and disgusting conditions in a little less than ten years, for the simple fact he couldn’t stand living in it, missed his luxuries, and hated ignorance. True to his word he made Chester’s kingdom the most prosperous kingdom in the realm, and it was growing steadily. Other countries were emulating them, and adapting as well. His rules for healthy living and cleanliness were practically set into law. Some of them even were made law, once the benefits were shown. Merlin had no care about the time line because this wasn’t his world, and therefore, his influence in it would be part of its natural timeline. He raked in money, he created jobs and infrastructure, and more jobs and more money, and the merchants just couldn’t get enough of him.

 

Chester, bent on world domination as he was, HATED that Merlin very obviously had advanced weapons and wouldn’t share them, teach anyone how they worked, or use them on Chester’s behalf. But his agreement with the Istari had always been very clear, Merlin could not be asked or ordered to kill, make weapons, or to participate in war, and Chester didn’t wish to find out the consequences should he break his word to him. When Chester had finally inquired why that was the one thing that Merlin wouldn’t do, Merlin had invited him into his home, something almost no one was permitted to do, and he took the king over to one of his magic windows. 

 

“What is the total population of your people, Your Majesty?”

 

“Over one million two hundred thousand, including women and children. We have been growing steadily since your arrival, as was foretold.”

 

Merlin nodded “We Istari are bringers of knowledge and wisdom, and yours is not the first world we have visited to share what we know. Once, we didn’t withhold any knowledge from those who wished to learn it. Once, we shared knowledge of weapons as freely as anything else we could teach. Ideas are seeds. Once those seeds grew, knowing was not enough for them. They built them, and then they used them on each other.” 

 

Pictures started moving within the window, showing flying machines raining down fire and hails of destruction, explosions decimating entire buildings in a single strike, the largest ship he had ever seen and made of metal, burning and crumbling into the sea as if it were paper.  “This was an attack on a harbor which killed over two thousand three hundred people in a single day. As you can imagine this devastating attack did not go without a counter strike.” 

 

The window suddenly showed two different pictures with similar views until the giant clouds of destruction rose up and light and holy fire destroyed the enormous cities in seconds. “Used three days apart, these weapons were used, slightly different but using a similar method. In seconds, one hundred twenty nine thousand, to two hundred forty six thousand people’s lives were destroyed. Not just soldiers, men, women, children, infants, the elderly. We don’t know the true count because many of the bodies were instantly vaporized, some only leaving their shadows burned into the stones. The lucky ones died instantly, the survivors were burned or horribly disfigured, had injuries that couldn’t even be treated. Their children were born disfigured, illnesses plagued them and their parents for the rest of their lives. Even the land and water was rendered to poison. Eighty years later and some of them are STILL suffering the effects of that one attack.”  

 

The pictures of the shadows, of the survivors, turned Chester’s stomach. That wasn’t war, it was slaughter. “We are teachers of _ people _ , your majesty, not countries, not kings,  _ people _ . My schools are open to all, highborn, low born and all points in between. If I share knowledge of weapons with you, I would be forced to share it with all of mankind, because to create such a thing, you have to create the groundwork for it. I couldn’t have created the sewers without having taught the people how to properly lay the brickwork and the plumbing and implementing the running water. Once the groundwork is laid, once they understand the mechanics and the materials and the way to harvest and handle them properly, it can’t be untaught. Even without me showing them the exact weapon, humanity is curious and clever, they would figure it out all on their own even without my help, once they understand the basics of how it works, because it’s unfortunately very VERY simple to build this weapon if you have the right materials. The complicated ones would be even worse. Would you ever want either enemy or ally to have such a thing in their possession which they could use against you or anyone else should they decide to? Especially since what was used on those people was the base model, the unrefined product, just to see if they had done it right? By the end of that war, up to eighty five million people had died.”

 

Chester had gone pale as a sheet, he looked ill and was shaking. Merlin led him away from the view screen, took him to the kitchen, made him tea, gave him three fingers of his best whiskey, and let the man sit in silence for nearly two hours. When he was recovered, he sought Merlin out, who was reading in a chair in the library. 

 

“Power like that shouldn’t be wielded by anyone.” He declared, and sat down heavily in an arm chair.

 

“I quite agree your majesty, hence why those particular seeds are ones I shall never sow. And why my focus lies with healing, community, and self growth. That isn’t to say the people won’t eventually figure it out on their own centuries or millennia from now, but I am hoping by then that war will truly be unnecessary, and so the seeds of such an idea shall never bear fruit.”

 

“You are truly wise, Merlin. I am glad that you are a teacher, you have certainly taught me a valuable lesson today.” 

 

“That is the highest honor a teacher can receive your majesty, to know that their student has learned something well, and found true value in it.”

 

It wasn’t the exact lesson Merlin would have preferred Chester learn, but it was a start. Chester never even entertained the thought of advanced weapons after that, in fact, he all but stopped war altogether and found solace in piety. His experience led him to become nearly fanatical against sin. The ten commandments became law. Liars, thieves, and other ‘sinners’ were punished severely or even put to death, their corpses hanging from the castle walls as a warning. 

 

Merlin asked for almost nothing for himself. The land he bought, the work he created, the things he built, all of it went directly to Chester’s people and benefit without even asking for recognition for it. The money he made he invested straight back into the people, and he always paid his taxes on time. None of the man’s ideas were foolish or unreasonable, and if you thought they were, he would be quick to demonstrate all the ways it would personally benefit you. At this point Chester didn’t even question Merlin anymore, just signed over the next item that he requested or change he wanted to implement and moved on.

 

The court didn’t like Merlin because he held a great deal of power and the King seemed to be in his pocket, but at the same time, he didn’t participate in any intrigue or scandal, didn’t get involved in politics, or making friends or enemies, nor use that power or influence to do anything beyond make everyone’s lives better. Their lives had improved to the point that even looking back on how it had been before was repugnant to them. Merlin’s ways were the height of fashion, and he surpassed even the Romans and Etruscans inventions. His inventions left them with more time to focus on their pleasures and less time trying to manage hours in the day. Each new enterprise he pursued flourished, the merchants hung onto his every word as if they had been spoken by God himself. He was all but pouring money into the pockets of anyone who backed his ventures, so no one was dumb enough to cross him or get rid of him. Instead the wealthy started giving him some of their lands to use for his projects, hoping to remain on his good side.   
  
The Church didn’t like him because he refused to attend Church, but if an angel of the heavenly host says he doesn’t need a middleman to talk to God, and didn’t have anything which required atonement or confession for anyway, one isn’t exactly in a position to argue that an Angel isn’t being religious enough for their tastes. He didn’t financially support any of the churches either and when asked why, he replied “God doesn’t need money, man does, and man is currently fighting over the correct way to worship God, continuously and willfully breaking one of his most sacred commandments. ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Once everyone comes to a consensus and joins together, and all wars cease, then my money would not be going towards hypocrisy.”

 

They had tried to assure him that any sin he committed in the name of Christ was not truly a sin, and would be summarily forgiven even before it had been done. He had replied that he found it far easier to just not commit the sin in the first place, instead of intentionally doing something against God’s laws and needing to ask forgiveness for it. Such a person, willfully committing such an act, would not truly be remorseful of their actions, only regretting the stain it had left on their souls, not the life they had taken against God’s will. The law was ‘thou shalt not kill’. Full stop. Not ‘thou shalt not kill, unless we don’t like or agree with them.’ 

 

A religious crusade from one of the churches declaring him a heretic and not an actual messenger of God, had been sent after Merlin exactly once. They had all been struck by ‘lightning’ and then immolated in flames the moment they tried bashing open Merlin’s door. The fire could not be quelled with water, in fact it only made it worse. Only one man escaped, barely, and while the Church waited for Merlin to retaliate, he did nothing more than have the bodies removed for collection, and went back inside to work.

 

They did notice that their power and influence over the people weakened significantly after the church tried to attack him, but with how enraged the king had been after an attempt was made on Merlin’s life, they knew they would be executed themselves for trying to declare him a heretic again, especially since he had an irrefutable argument and threat all rolled into one that he sent to them. 

 

“If what you preach is utter truth, you won’t mind the people’s questions, or my challenges. Only falsehoods fear to be looked at closely, as lies dissolve when the light of truth is cast upon them. If you fear me, and what I am saying and doing for the betterment of God’s children, then perhaps I should look at you more closely and figure out why that is.” He had no more trouble from any church after that.

 

Previously respected doctors hated him because he had not only cast their ways into disgrace, but made them look like fools. Yet at the same time the advanced knowledge and treatments he offered freely to all was invaluable and he never openly mocked or lorded his position over them. And they knew that only a true fool could not accept a correction from a teacher or admit when they were wrong.

 

No one knew what to do with him, and he was too powerful and too valuable to try and get rid of, so mostly, people figured the best thing to do was to keep him happy, on their side, and making their lives better.

 

The things he asked for in payment were the strangest things, gold, silver, copper, and salt made sense, but the softest beach sands, chunks of the crudest iron, near worthless metals like tin or aluminum, or specific looking rocks, clay, or soils, and trade that seemed wholly in the other person’s favor, made no sense to any of them.   

 

The children began calling him ‘Teacher’ instead of his name, and he was happy to teach and answer questions and train other teachers to carry on in his ways and branch out to as many neighboring kingdoms as possible, his own sort of missionaries, spreading science and advancements and so very much soap. He kindled the imagination as well as critical thinking, he taught to always ask questions, and never stop until having found a satisfactory answer. 

 

By the tenth year he had resigned himself to the fact that he very likely would never go home again, and had a sort of mourning over the fact. He hoped that his two favorite idiots had gotten their heads out of their arses and at least caught on to the fact they were mad for each other. 

 

He did very little work that year, mostly taught and built more schools and a few hospitals. It kept him busy, now that old buildings were being either modernized and connected to the sewer system, or torn down and rebuilt with all of the modern conveniences as standard practice.

 

He introduced layered clay chilling units to keep food or drinks cold and make them last longer, introduced a dozen new foods for them to try, introduced cast iron cookware and cast iron wood burning stoves, built windmills to power both forges, granaries, wine and oil presses, and made beekeeping and flower/herb growing extremely important jobs. Chester had become even more obsessed with the prophecy but Merlin maintained the person hadn’t appeared yet, and he was still working on it.

 

A year ago last winter Merlin had gotten a summons from the gargoyles to come quickly, that there was a very ill child in their home. Merlin rushed there and was shocked stupid to find a tiny Harry with one foot in the grave. He stayed there three days, tending the boy for scarlet fever, influenza AND pneumonia, since the imp was hell bent on scaring him half to death. He offered to take the boy with him, but they explained that Harry didn’t trust strangers, and actually  _ lived there _ in the eaves of the cathedral, and knew nothing about them. He had thought most of the town's and cities were beyond such things as homelessness. They used their magic to keep the cold and the wind out, and to make sure the boy stayed warm and comfortable, with strict instructions that should the boy need anything, he could come to Merlin. But Harry had never come by, though he had been told the boy recovered just fine, so he was content to leave well enough alone.

 

Today though, he had just gotten started on a way to heat enough water for a family of five without fire, and had finally perfected how to make mason jars with the available things he had. The glass hadn’t been the hard part, the seal on the lids had. He was going to introduce proper canning to these people if it was the last thing he ever did. He fucking MISSED good quality pickles damnit. It had been market day, and though his day had been peaceful, his evening was not going to prove to be.


	3. Bound by Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry winds up smack in the middle of a blood feud, a marriage, and a forced mating?! This was not how his evening was supposed to go.

**Present Day**

 

It was shopping day and Harry was busy in the market. He had washed all of his clothes by dawn and traded the wooden carvings he had made for a used set of long enough trousers, since his old ones had been let out as much as they could be and were wearing thin in places. He spent a farthing on a honey roll and deftly slipped a half burned loaf of bread off the end of the cart and straight into his satchel, never even looking suspicious. A cart after that he ‘accidentally’ knocked over a basket of apples and hurriedly helped clean them back up, slipping two into his shirt and receiving another two as a reward from the gentleman for his polite manners. He payed for a bottle of milk and a small lump of butter, then begged a leftover rind of hard cheese that was mostly wax from the dairy cart, since he was short on funds this week, but a story of how his pregnant mother was at home, bound to the bed with a minor injury, and desperately craving it was well received. He swore to pay the man back next week, knowing full well the man would forget within the hour, since he used the same story every week, all while slipping a better wedge into his pocket since he also didn’t remember Harry milking his cows the last three days and hadn’t paid him for it. 

 

From the butcher he got two small soup bones with rather a lot of meat still on them for free, since he pointed out the thief trying to take their sausages, and a job offer to come by and help tend the animals and skin rabbits for a penny a day. The lady two booths down gave him a little sack of nuts and dry beans for minding her child and the booth for an hour so she could drag her husband away from the ale barrel without losing business. 

 

He traded one of the apples for a bag of dried fruits, afterwards he snagged two potatoes, three carrots, and an onion from the testy farmer who liked chasing kids and thrashing them with his broom, or his belt if he actually caught hold of them. He slipped back into the crowd before anyone noticed, tucking them into his satchel with lithe fingers. 

 

The spice merchant sold him a ‘useless’ bag of herbs and spices that had ‘accidentally’ gotten all mixed together for just a penny instead of the threepenny it usually was, to go along with the two bulbs of garlic he bought. Finally, he used two farthings to buy a cabbage from the sweet old widow who had knitted him a pair of socks last winter. She insisted he also take the two gravy pies she pressed into his hand, and he promised to come by to help her with some errands. 

 

Before he left the market he filled all four of his waterskins at the well before heading off again.

 

He was a bit of a town secret in a way. Many of the merchants knew that he was worse off than he tried to portray, and many of them took pity on him by giving him a bit more than he could pay for. But he always tried to pay them back and was honest about the offers of help he made and the work he did for them. He ran errands and messages for a farthing or two depending on how far it needed to go, and helped the elderly for minimal prices and mostly functioned in trade. He always paid for clothing, only stole food when he had to, never more than he needed, and always tried to buy something from those he did take from, unless the person was truly mean, like the farmer. Most of the merchants looked the other way, and found something for him to do in trade, or tended to give him a discount, like the spice merchant so he didn’t have to steal.

 

Harry had learned that appearances tended to take you farther along with others when you were a penniless orphan if you didn’t LOOK like you were a penniless orphan. He dressed as well as he could, always bathed thrice a week, washed his clothes twice a week, and washed his hands and face daily like his mother had always insisted he do. He even had a preciously hoarded chunk of soap that he used whenever he could spare it, and prided himself on being able to have long hair since he kept it free of lice. 

 

Everyone thought his mother was still alive, that she was sickly and that he was doing the best he could to care for her on his own since his dad had died, and they had no steady income coming in. They thought he had a house with a roof over his head at least, and he did, but not the kind of roof they were thinking of. 

 

He was two alleys away from the market before he began climbing, darting up to the rooftops where the guards never thought to look. He made his way rooftop to rooftop, not difficult in a city where all the buildings seemed to be connected or pressed very close together. It was just about midday when he made it to the church, climbing the nooks and crannies of the sides, up to the places where birds made their nests among the statues, and where the priests never came. 

 

He had a little alcove up there, a tiny crawl space under the eaves of the roof off one of the rooms of the attic, and not easily accessible from the church proper. It was just big enough for him and his things, had a stone floor he could build a small fire on, and was completely sheltered from the wind and rain and snow. He was small and didn’t need much, and he didn’t want to be forced into one of the orphanages either, those were terrible places with never enough food. He’d been in one for a month before he had escaped, and swore never to be have to return to one ever again.

 

Once he reached the top, there was a level area, surrounded by a hip high wall with stone plinths, nests, and several gargoyles positioned on or in them around the entire thing. A little bit inward from that rose another spire, which held the door to a tiny room, that led to some stairs down into the main attic. He mostly slept in that topmost room in a tiny corner hidden by several crates. It had everything he needed; chamber pot, small oil lamp, and candles he had made from cheese rinds and drippings from the candles in the chapel, a slate he could build a small fire on, a cooking pot, a small sleeping space he had made up, and a little trunk he’d been given to keep his clothes and other slight belongings in. He figured the candle wax wasn’t stealing if it never left the building he had found it in. 

 

Harry trailed his fingers over the stone gargoyles in familiarity as he passed them, bowing to each of them in respect, as his mother had taught him he should always do, for gargoyles protected the towns and structures they were built on, and were said to come to life to defend them if they wore a collar or necklace, which all of these had, he’d checked. Harry had never seen such a thing personally, but being as he slept right under the roof behind them, he figured it didn’t hurt to give them his respect. 

 

He tucked his purchases away, then crawled into one of the largest of the stone nests, complete with four stone eggs that one of the gargoyles guarded. Harry called him ‘Eggsy’ because of it and viewed him as a guardian of children, due to how he stood guard crouched over the nest, wings spread to shelter them from the elements. Eggsy’s wasn’t the only nest with eggs in it, in fact one was stuffed with eggs and children of multiple ages and a loving couple watching over them. There hadn’t been any real room for him to curl up comfortably in that one. 

 

His mother had used to tell him stories about how gargoyles could come to life at night, and how they could only be heard when the wind whistled over their tongues while they were stone. He had never heard Eggsy or the others speak, but he still listened when the winds were strong, just in case. He loved the nice shaded spot in Eggsy’s nest, and laid there many an afternoon on the sun warmed stone telling Eggsy about his day. Today was no different. He’d lost count of the times he had fallen asleep feeling sheltered and safe in that nest.

 

Eggsy had the face of a young man with curling ram horns on his head, a four point jewel pressed into his forehead, a collar around his throat like a dog might wear, a long whip like tail with a heavy clubbed tip, fierce claws on both hands and feet, broad bat like wings, and legs that seemed to have an extra joint that bent the wrong way, like an animal. He supposed to anyone else, Eggsy would be very frightening, but to Harry, his face was gentle and beautiful, even though it was fierce. Harry talked to Eggsy while he carved a bit of wood into the shape of another of the gargoyles nearby. He sold the carvings as protection charms against evil, and aside from the errands and odd jobs he did, it was his main source of income.

 

Harry had come to Camelot a little over two and a half years ago, after his mother died. His father had been killed in war when he was six, and his mother’s heart had never recovered. Eventually her health had declined, and she passed away three years later. No one in the village could take him in and feed him even if he pulled his share, and the lands belonged to the king. So he took his meager belongings and abandoned the little farm, making for the city in hopes of finding his mother’s brother who lived there, or maybe just some work. His uncle had apparently died years ago, with no inheritance for him to claim, and there was very little work that people would entrust to a nine year old orphan that made enough to survive on. 

 

He had lived on the streets for months, slowly starving, until one day he had been so hungry that he accepted the offer of food a passing richly dressed alpha offered him in exchange for the man using his mouth and his arse as he liked during his rut. The man had taken him to his house, his servants bathed him what felt like ten times over, fed him, then, for a week straight, the man had used Harry at all hours of the day and night in whichever way pleased him best. At the time, Harry remembered the pain in his belly had been far greater than the pain in his arse had ever been. They were fed and tended day and night by beta servants, who had wiped them down, given Harry watered down wine, and poppy milk, and thrust oil and ointment up Harry’s very sore and well used arse at every chance in hopes the rutting alpha wouldn’t permanently damage him, even as his stomach, chest and thighs were drenched with sweat and cum, and his hole was leaking the mans’ seed at every turn. 

 

The man had only fully gotten his knot in Harry once, and Harry had sobbed the whole hour they were locked together, because as much as it hurt, part of him liked it, liked being held down and claimed, he liked being filled. The man had been so gentle with him that time, kissing all over his face, soothing him and telling him how beautiful he was, and how good he was being. When the man whispered in his ear that he was a beautiful little omega, and when he grew a bit, he’d easily take cocks even bigger than the pike staff currently shoved up his arse, then beg for more until he was properly bred and round with a litter of babies, Harry had to admit, he didn’t hate the idea. An alpha to claim and care for him, give him a family, no that didn’t sound bad at all. Harry had shivered in the man’s arms and the man had kissed the top of Harry’s head and whispered that he was jealous of such an alpha, for he would very much like to keep Harry for himself if he could, but he was already mated.

 

Even though he nearly choked on the man’s cockstand several dozen times until he had finally gotten used to the thick girth and learned to breathe around it, he couldn’t remember what the man’s name was anymore, though he remembered what he looked like. It was mostly because he had been half dead from hunger, then sex and exhaustion, and it hadn’t been important at the time. What had been important had been keeping the man happy so that he’d keep on feeding him up, and the man hadn’t been stingy either, he had fed him well. Harry didn’t know if it was true generosity or the basic instinct of an alpha to tend and protect an Omega, no matter that Harry was only nine and hadn’t had his first heat, and wouldn’t for some time yet. Either way, Harry was no fool, and took every bit of generosity he was granted.

 

The man had been less desperate once his rut ended, but had still kept Harry on afterwards, with the same offer, food and the bed, in exchange for sex. He’d even given Harry a few days of rest after his rut ended in order to recover before fucking him again. The man taught him very patiently about giving and receiving pleasure, how to kiss and touch and excite, things he hadn’t been capable of showing Harry while addled with rut lust. He knew of sex acts Harry couldn’t even have imagined, showed Harry books with illustrations of the most depraved scenes, then reenacted them together at the man’s encouragement.

 

Harry remembered crawling around on the floor, various sizes of carved phalluses shoved up his arse or stuffed in his mouth till he choked and coughed until he eventually adapted to them. The man had even had a soft leather one, small and shaped like a cock head, that Harry had been trained to fall asleep suckling on. He also ate bits of food from the man’s hand regularly. That had seemed to be the man’s favourite thing, to have Harry do something, then ‘reward him’ with a bite of food from his hand, as if Harry were his pampered pet receiving a treat. Harry wasn’t dumb enough to turn that down, and hungry at the moment or not, he never refused a single bite. Harry quickly learned the man preferred it if Harry took the bite slowly, licking and suckling his fingers afterwards, sometimes even fellating his hand the same as he would do the man’s cockstand. If he did that, he was often given a second treat.

 

They didn’t talk, at least not about anything important. It wasn’t a relationship, it was a business arrangement, food in exchange for sex. Harry hadn’t cared that he was essentially a kept whore or a catamite. He slept safely in a fine bed every night, even if he might be woken at any time with a cockerel shoved up his arse or down his throat again, it was far better than the streets. He got plenty of rest anyway since he rarely left the bed, with how the man’s passions were stoked as high as they were for him. Harry apparently was just his sort of fancy; ‘pretty, obedient, and with an arse and mouth meant for fucking’ he’d said more than once. 

 

Not to mention that with how well the man fed him, Harry was quickly regaining his health, and therefore his vigor, and was able to not only receive the man’s attentions, but reciprocate and even start a few encounters himself since the man encouraged his depravity and rewarded him well for it. Toys, pretty gifts, and sweets, even a new set of fine clothes which he almost never wore. Harry had taken to wearing one of the man’s linen shirts around the house if he needed to go anywhere, it made it easier, since undoubtedly he’d be naked and fucked again shortly, and bothering with anything more than the large shirt was a waste of time. He of course got dressed if the man took Harry out with him. For some reason the man had enjoyed having them ride together on a single horse when they went out, and Harry never protested.

 

The man kept him for over six months, fucking, training, and spoiling Harry at his leisure before he was called away on a long journey where apparently it would be too risky to bring Harry along with him. He planned on keeping Harry at his city home, hiring him on for some small job around the house and posing him as the son of one of his cooks, so he could be the man’s kept lover, until the man received word the very next day that his wife and daughters were coming down to the city to stay. “She’d flay you alive if she found you here, she whipped the last boy of mine she found half to death. Jealous and vicious as a harpy that one.” He kept Harry until the very last moment before he left, and sent Harry on his way with two satchels stuffed with food, a large pouch of coins, another good set of clothes, shoes, and a warm woolen cloak with a hood, with a length of fabric tucked up inside that he could let out as he grew. He had also taken Harry to a good inn and paid for his stay for two months.

 

Walking through the market that day was when he realized how differently a well kept appearance made people treat you here. He knew about Merlin’s rules, and tried his best to follow them. The king’s rules were much MUCH more difficult. He rationed the food carefully, and his coin even more so, but even that had only lasted him six months before he was struggling again. He sold what he could spare, but before his money was gone entirely is when he had gone to the orphanage, hoping to at least have a bed, food in his belly, and a roof over his head. 

 

It had been his worst mistake, the orphanage was run by extremely cruel people who not only barely fed them since they said there wasn’t enough to go around, but would withhold food for days if you were being punished, they would hit and beat them for the slightest provocation, they had even tried to take what little possessions Harry had left in lieu of ‘providing a roof over his head’. More like so he couldn’t survive if he tried to run away. He caught on to the rest of their dirty dealings after only a week. They whored the children out and put every coin from it into their own pockets. 

 

It was one thing for it to have been Harry’s choice to agree to the man’s terms and go with him of his own free will and be treated well for his time. It was entirely another for someone else to decide to pass you around to all and sundry against your will, make a profit off of you and do nothing but treat you ill, and leave a person with no chance to escape, because if they left with nothing, they would undoubtedly be forced to return eventually or die on the streets. 

 

Harry was not willing to be passed around, if he wanted to be a whore he could do it for himself and make a livable profit at it after everything the man had taught him, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He kept his belongings with him and escaped the moment he could, crawling onto the roof and then to the next house over and then the next, again and again until he was truly free of them. When they had sent the dogs after him they had no trail to follow. 

 

That’s how he had learned about how much better it was to keep to the rooftops and high places, to remain nearly invisible and still manage to get around. He had practiced every day and one day set himself the challenge of climbing the cathedral, just to prove that he could. It was then he had found the tiny alcove off the spire, and had decided to stay there after careful hiding to make sure he wouldn’t be found. He had lived there ever since. He still had those satchels, the wine skin that had been inside them, the coin purse and the warm woollen cloak, the man had given him, they had seen him through a number of trials and had kept him warm through all the cold winter nights. He was also ready at a moments notice to leave again should he need to.

 

Harry was eleven now, and was finally being taken up on his requests for true work. He was hoping that the tailor’s wife was serious about her husband perhaps taking him on as his apprentice, since none of their children had survived to adulthood. 

 

Life was going just fine, Harry had clothes and food and a place over his head, and even a bit of work lined up. Perhaps things were finally going to go right for him.

 

Famous last words.

  
  


After his supper of stew, he crept down to the lower parts of the cathedral’s attic to listen to the monks at their prayers. He had once debated maybe joining the church, living with the monks, they seemed to at least be well fed and safe, but there were so many factions, and truthfully church and God had never really interested him all that much. Plus the monks were strict, very strict. They prayed over a dozen times a day, even in the middle of the night, and Harry was quite fond of getting a full night of sleep. He enjoyed the sounds of the hymns even if he didn’t understand the Latin they were said in. 

 

He made up his own words to them instead, and imagined the words floating up to Heaven as he watched the sunset through the stained glass windows. It was beautiful and peaceful, and quite relaxing.

 

*****

 

The sun sank below the horizon and Aureos and his clan were released from their stone forms, awake and alive again. ‘Eggsy’ smiled to himself. There had been many times he had watched over the young boy as he had curled up into his nest and fallen asleep among his eggs, and now was no different. Daisy and Jamal had gotten to the age that they had wanted plinths of their own, still very near to him, on either side of him in fact, but no longer in his nest. In truth the boy had all but become clan to them.

 

He saw great potential in the boy, his cleverness, perseverance and resourcefulness were not qualities everyone possessed, and were not something to be overlooked or taken for granted. Eggsy had figured out rather quickly how the boy must be acquiring most of his goods, but there was no  _ proof _ that he was stealing, and so no compulsion. Their rounds and sentry places changed so as to avoid good vantage points in the market, and were spread further throughout the city under the pretense they could view more ground that way. More than once they had hidden the boy the few times the monks actually came up there, and they not only had Lapis enchant his pallet so he would sleep undisturbed with only the sweetest dreams, but they cared for him as best they could in other ways too. All of them had done it, slipping extra food into his stores, an extra coin or two into his purse, mending his blankets, replenishing the oil in his lamp with some from their own, leaving useful items or scraps of cloth where he would be sure to find them, and other things that went wholly unnoticed by the lad. 

 

The first winter the boy had stayed there had been so bitterly cold that he had grown very ill. While the enchantment had the boy sleeping through the night as always, for three nights Eggsy had cradled the ill and delirious boy in his arms, spooning him small sips of broth and tea, making sure he stayed as warm and comfortable as possible, and tended his fever, and his breathing. Eventually Roxy had brought the wizard Merlin to see the boy when he didn’t seem to be recovering, and he had given him some sort of magical potion that he had had to stab into his arm. All while muttering darkly about how if the boy died, he’d be forced to raise him from the dead just to kill him himself. It hadn’t made any sense to him, but he understood how much the lad meant to Merlin, which meant Eggsy would protect them both.

 

They had barely gotten inside when one of Corvus’s ravens alighted on the wall with a note attached to his leg. Ryan had seen a boy who looked rather a bit like the boy who stayed in their tower, steal from a farmer in the merchant today and head towards the cathedral. He was on his way to tell the king. 

 

Eggsy felt himself go pale, rushed inside and he and the others began to make a plan. They would make the boy kin, they could hide him from Chester, they wouldn’t allow the sweet boy who paid them such respect to come to harm. Eggsy sent the raven off to Merlin with a note just in case they failed, and hoped it got there in time.

 

*****

 

After the service was over night had truly fallen and Harry crept back up to his little nook. He never went back out climbing after dark, the stones were often slick with dew and the wind could be very strong. He didn’t want to fall.

 

He had just curled up to fall asleep in his darkened corner when the shadows shifted and moved towards him and he didn’t even have time to scream before a taloned hand was over his mouth and strong limbs were grabbing him and hauling him over to a wall. It opened up in some secret way and then he stood blinking in the well lit set of rooms. He would have screamed anew at what he saw. A room stuffed full of living, breathing, MOVING gargoyles. He tried to struggle and pull away, but the arms around him held fast. He froze when wings wrapped around him.

 

“Peace child, peace. We shan’t harm you. We have watched over you every night while you sleep, since the day you arrived. You are as good as clan to us. If you don’t scream, I’ll release you. Screaming would wake the babies, and the monks to not care to hear the babies crying. You don’t want the monks to come up here and find you, do you?”

 

Harry shook his head no. 

 

“Swear not to scream?” 

 

Harry frantically nodded and the wings and the hand over his mouth released him. He was breathing harshly, but couldn’t escape, they were everywhere. He didn’t know what else to do, and so he did the only thing that he could remember at the moment when it came to gargoyles, he bowed, and he stayed that way.

 

“Always the polite one, aren’t you? It’s alright, you can stand, Annmarie is right, none of us would ever willingly hurt you. I’m Aureos, clan alpha, or you can call me Eggsy as you have been doing. It’s become a popular nickname among my clan. What’s your name little human?”

 

“H-Harry, Harry Hart.”

 

“We’ll introduce everyone else later, but right now we have a serious problem. Some very bad men are coming here Harry, and they are looking for a human thief. They will be here in moments. Now, none of us have ever  **_seen_ ** you take anything from anyone. If we had, we would have turned you straight over to the king ages ago as we have been forcibly ordered to do with all thieves. That doesn’t mean they will believe us though. You have always shown us respect, and we have grown fond of protecting you while you sleep. To us, you are all but clan already. We’d hate for them to mistake you for a thief. To us, you are just an orphan who needs a family, and we protect our families with our lives. We can make you our clanmate, we can even make you look just like us, but it has to be willing, you have to ASK to join us.”

 

“J-join you? Couldn’t you just let me escape? Couldn’t I just run? Or claim sanctuary? The church accepts anyone!”

 

“No, you can’t run, there is a witness among the guards who can identify what the thief looked like. One of our kind. These collars force us to obey the king even when we don’t want to. We would be ordered to hunt you down en masse if you ran, and you couldn’t hide from all of us. You can’t claim Sanctuary from the church, it’s EXACTLY what the king wants, and you’d be dead by morning. He has the priests in his pockets even more than we are. I know it is a lot to ask, to trust us, but Gargoyles protect, that is all we do. So before anyone unseemly comes around, would you like to ask us anything Harry?”

 

Harry’s knees hit the floor faster than he even thought they could have. He just wanted to live. “Please,” he begged, prostrating himself before the one he had called Eggsy, “please allow me to join your family.”

 

“I am willing to accept him into our clan, all in favor?”

 

“AYE!”

 

“Any opposed?”

 

No one made a sound.

 

“Wonderful. Then-”

 

“We got company Eggsy, thirty guards, Ryan, and the King.” Said a black feathered gargoyle by the window. “Probably thinks if we’ve been harboring a thief there might be more than one.”

 

“Buggering perfect. Two minutes on that spell Lapis! Roxy, Charlie, Gazelle, hide his things! Then as Alpha I welcome Harry into our clan, ritualistic buillshit, rules that we can cover later, so on and so forth, Pegasi I really need that necklace!”

 

A small, white feathered gargoyle who rather looked like a unicorn rushed forward. “It’s right here.” He stated, slipping the cord with a bright blue crystal on it over Harry’s head. “Hurry and scent him!”

 

Harry was dragged to his feet and he didn’t resist as Eggsy’s nose brushed behind his ear and over the nape of his neck, though he did shiver head to toe. Eggsy’s hands went tight around his arms. “He’s not a beta! He’s an omega, still unpresented, but an omega.” Harry nearly stumbled as Eggsy released him as if he’d been far too rough and was ashamed of it. 

 

Pegasi’s eyes went wide. “Clan alone won’t protect him then. He needs to be bound to an alpha, or the kingsnake might take interest.”

 

“Our alphas are either not inclined towards males, underage, or bonded, Pegasi.” 

 

“You’re not.”

 

“WHAT?!”

 

“You’re not bonded. Tilde was your betrothed, not your mate, and she fled with Sabelle. She is part of a separate clan now, and you haven’t even spoken directly to each other in thirty years. Ten years of silence constitutes a dissolution of bond. By every gargoyle law I know of, that means your promise to each other is long since broken. You aren’t betrothed or bonded to anyone Aureos, and if you don’t bond with Harry, Argent undoubtedly will, presented or not, he’s the oldest omega among those we have left.”

 

The black feathered gargoyle called out from the window. “Whatever it is you’re going to be doing, hurry up and fucking do it! The guards and king are all inside and Argent is flying in fast from the castle!”

 

“Damnit why isn’t there ever any  **_time_ ** ?!” Aureos snarled. He turned to Harry, who was looking absolutely terrified, and took him by the shoulders. “I’m sorry. I wish there was another way. I swear, we won’t consummate the bond until you’re of age, or will find a way to break it later, I PROMISE.”

 

Harry, shook his head. “Just do it. I don’t care, I don’t want to die.” and he bared his neck to Aureos’ teeth, which sank down into the tender skin and bound him to the gargoyle as blood and saliva and the fluid from the bonding gland all met and mingled. He couldn’t stop the cry of pain, but as soon as he was released he bit back into Eggsy's neck, sealing the bond between them. The urge to scent, claim, and mark his new mate was strong and heady, but somehow Eggsy had far more control than Harry did. 

 

Eggsy pressed him right into Pegasi’s arms “Heal him, and tuck him into my nest, it can’t look moments fresh. Lapis, the spell to activate the necklace?”

 

Anglius came over and healed Aureos’ bond bite, and Lapis finished the finishing touch on her work and went to cast the spell which would make Harry appear to be a gargoyle. Aureos and the others went about their usual nightly routine, making sure all of Harry’s belongings were unpacked and mixed in with their own, indistinguishable from the rest.

 

Harry meanwhile was tucked into the same nest he always took naps in, his shirt was taken away, and a thick blanket tucked over him which smelled strongly of his mate. Pegasi smiled after healing the bond bite. 

 

“Luckily you have been resting here many many times, the eggs already carry your scent a bit. Stay here, under the blanket, hopefully they won’t even notice you, but if they do, you have the perfect excuse of scenting and nesting the eggs. As his mate, Aureos’ children would become yours as well.”

 

Lapis arrived with a smile as Pegasi stepped away nodding to her before returning inside. She chanted something over him which made the blue stone flash brilliant blue and the next thing Harry knew, he had  _ wings _ and a  _ tail  _ and his skin was dark brown, the same color as his hair. 

 

“I know they wouldn’t have thought of this, but how old are you Harry?” She asked gently.

 

“Eleven, twelve come autumn.”

 

“If anyone asks, you are one hundred and twenty. A fledgling by our standards, no one will expect you to fly that way. As for your history, I think it’s best if we keep it simple. The rest of your clan died in battle, you came here seeking acceptance into a new clan. If they ask which clan you came from, you say ‘The Stonefire clan in the southern fells.’ Can you remember that?”

 

“Yes.” Harry answered with a nod.

 

“Good. How old are you?”

 

“One hundred and twenty.” 

 

“What clan do you come from?”

 

“The Stonefire Clan in the southern fells.”

 

“And why would you leave them to come here?”

 

“The last of them died in battle. I came to find a new clan, a new family, I didn’t want to be alone.”

 

“Very good. Now, this is pure Memory that our clan has been collecting for years, and mostly from Aureos, Anglius, Pegasi, and myself, so it might be a little overwhelming, but it’s necessary. It’s the fastest way to know our names, culture, and our history. Should you be found it would be strange not to know us, our laws, or the ways of gargoyles.” She put two drops in his ears, one in each eye, and a final one onto his tongue. It tasted rather like black currant wine.

 

“One last thing, you have been bonded to Aureos for three days. It will explain why the bond hasn’t fully settled yet.”

 

“Three days. Got it.” Harry’s hands were shaking, and bright colors were beginning to flash behind his eyes.

 

Lapis smiled. “Good lad, now, just stay here. Remember, you’re safe with us.”

 

Harry hid deep in the blanket and tried very hard to just be invisible. His neck still throbbed a bit from the bite even though it had been physically healed. New mates were supposed to bond for up to a week after a mating bite, barely able to be out of each other’s presence until the bond had settled. Having been mated only seconds ago he felt flushed and scared to be on his own, and instinctively wanted his mate nearby. But the eggs, the eggs in the nest were fascinating to him, they were not stone as they were during the day, he could hear little movements within two of them and he curled around them, tracing the shell patterns with his claw tip as gently as he could. “Shhhh I know, it’s all very scary right now, it’s going to be alright, I’ll look after you and he’ll look after all of us. He seems a good sort doesn’t he? A very capable alpha.”

 

There was still the feel of magic flowing around him, thoughts and memories and knowledge swirling around and around his mind. His vision changed slightly so the night time didn’t seem so dark, he could feel his limbs still stretching and growing, and his joints popping as his wings seemed to grow stronger. It was uncomfortable, but it didn’t hurt more than any other growing pains. He distracted himself by breathing deeply and trying to work out how his tail moved. He’d never had a tail before. 

 

The potion must have kicked in fully because names and faces suddenly flashed in his head, snippets of history, memories of things he couldn’t have known, had never seen, or was even aware of. He suddenly knew not only why it was the Stonefire clan he was pretending to hail from, but just why he was hiding from Argent and disguised as a gargoyle in the first place. Argent was Clanless and had failed at taking over the clan and stealing the children and eggs thirty three years ago. No other clan would touch him now except to rip him to shreds for what he had done, so he was trying to force one of this clan’s enslaved Omegas to bond with him, or carry his egg so he could start over. Vertaina was unable to bear again, and even Argent wouldn’t try breeding with his brothers. Ametrine had been taken away a year ago and they hadn’t seen her since, but knew Argent hadn’t succeeded in his plans since he was still hunting. While several of the hatchlings and fledglings had a good mix of omegas in them, He had long since set his eye on Daisy, waiting for her to mature enough to mate with. Had Harry been a beta or an alpha they would have betrothed him to Daisy to keep her safe from Argent, since they were of a like age, or at least close maturity wise. Since he was an omega closer to the breeding age than Daisy, Argent would have taken him by force if he wasn’t bonded. But because he’d been bonded to Eggsy, a solution hadn’t been found yet for Daisy, and she was still at risk of abduction.

 

It was all very confusing and terrifying, and it made him long to fight and claw and destroy the vile worm. He was scared, and his base instincts took over. He was in his mate’s nest with his mate’s scent and children, and he drew comfort from that because it was safe, it was home, it was right, and there was one thing that he knew he  _ could _ do. It was quiet here, and the eggs were important, he was compelled to scent them, rubbing his cheek and chin over them, and murmuring soothingly to them. It gave him something to focus on, and he ignored all else. Harry curled tighter around the eggs, arms and wings and even tail, until they were fully shielded. He’d protect them. They were his, his and his mate’s. He’d prove he was worth keeping, he’d guard these eggs with his life. His mate would be so pleased with him accepting his family, and Harry would have a family again, a real family, he wouldn’t be alone, and his Eggsy seemed to have a kind and gentle heart. Yes. Eggsy’s eggs would be his eggs too. His children would be their children, and Eggsy would make everything alright again. He could trust his alpha to keep them all safe.

 

\---0000---

 

Back inside Aureos was feeling the annoying itch to scent and mark and claim his mate, to set the bond fully, and not let him go until there was no doubt the boy was owned. However mating bites usually calmed by the third day, so he couldn’t go giving away the ruse. An hour, one hour and he could do what his instincts demanded, he just had to get the Kingsnake and Chester to get out and take all of their guards with him.

 

Perhaps the meeting was going well, he couldn’t tell, he was completely distracted. There was bowing and pledging to serve as usual, Ryan was looking ashamed of himself, as well he should, and the guards were searching their home top to bottom. The closer they got to the outside landing and the nests, the more Aureos’ blood boiled. There was a warning growl, a dangerous and threatening snarl. “Stay away from my nest if you know what’s good for you.” 

 

Argent’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and stalked straight over to it, Aureous’ clanmates could barely hold Aureos back. But the smirk on Argent’s face was immediately wiped away as he pulled back the blanket and a pint sized gargoyle sprang from the nest all claws and teeth and blood lust, shrieking and howling his war cry, and nearly clawing Argent’s face and tearing out the traitor’s throat with his claws while buffeting him fiercely with wings and tail. If the boy could have flown he might have even succeeded in killing Argent. 

 

Aureos was near howling with laughter as the small spitfire omega viciously attacked the traitor, who was now doing all in his power to just get away, but the moment the guards advanced swords and bows drawn, Aureos threw off those holding him and rushed to his mate’s protection. If they fired on him, the magic would break, because his collar controlled all of the others, it released him on death, therefore releasing all of them as well. It was one of the many things he had learned about their curse over the years. Chester NEEDED him alive, and so did Argent, otherwise they would both be torn apart in moments by the others. 

 

Sure enough the guards were forced to lower their weapons, and Argent managed to scramble away and back to his feet, severely clawed and bleeding in several spots. None of Aureos’ healers were feeling particularly inclined to do anything about it though. Eggsy meanwhile was soothing and reassuring his little mate, stroking his hair and letting the lad sniff and scent him, draping his wings around the boy. Argent was looking murderous and even more so when Eggsy smirked.

 

“I DID warn you. You know better than to disturb a nesting omega. Rather dangerous thing to try and do. Be grateful you still have your head and hands attached.”

 

Harry meanwhile had come out of the protective blood haze, and finally truly seen the one who had tried touching his eggs. Memories, so many memories welled up, steeped with anger and hatred and the bitter sting of betrayal. White hair, powder pale gray skin, white horns sweeping back on his head, silver eyes, white feathered wings with grey undersides. Even his clothes were white and silver. He bore a striking resemblance to Pegasi and Anglius, with the hair and skin and wings a perfect match to theirs, but his face was older, and not nearly as kind. Anglius and Pegasi also had bright bluish green eyes, and their horns were silver, Pegasi a single spiraling one on his forehead, and Anglius two tiny goat horns barely visible through his hair. They were obviously related, meaning he could only be one person.

 

“The Clanless Traitor. Even in the Southern Fells we have heard of your cowardice. No wonder you needed to resort to betrayal, you can’t even fend off an unarmed fledgling on your own. Pathetic. You really thought that anyone would follow  _ YOU _ ? You wouldn’t have lasted a day unchallenged. You’ll not TOUCH my eggs you Clanless scum, they are claimed and wanted, unlike YOU. Get away from my nest, I won’t warn you again.” Harry snarled, his eyes flashing with the heightened battle lust, wanting to tear the traitor apart on his own merits, not just for disturbing his nest.

 

“Hold him fast Aureos. Don’t let the little one go.” Came Chester’s command and his Alpha’s arms forcibly tightened around Harry, restraining him. Aureos was growling low, both a threat to the king and a command from his alpha for Harry to settle. Harry obeyed, he wouldn’t struggle against his mate, he hoped his alpha would rip the traitor apart himself if he wasn’t willing to let Harry do it for him. The human scum came over and tilted his chin up, forcing him to meet his eyes even though Harry growled at being touched by anyone besides Eggsy. The King smirked “You’re not from this clan are you? Where’s your clan? Where do you hail from?”

 

Harry was sorely tempted to spit at the man. He stopped himself. Barely. “The rest are dead, they died honorably in battle against raiders, the eggs smashed by a cave in from an earthquake before the volcano erupted. I’m from the Stone fire clan originally, but now that I am mated, this is my clan.”

 

“And what is your name? What are you called?”

 

“It’s you humans who have the need to name everything, not my kind. I am called brother and kinsman and mate. When you have clan, you know who you are, I have no need of names.”

 

“Well, if you you want to belong to this clan, and belong to Aureos, then you belong to me by default, and my things have names.”

 

“I’m not a  _ thing _ . You can no more claim the wind than you can the sun or the sea, and naming something doesn’t make it yours.”

 

“I’m afraid that isn’t how it works.” Chester held out a collar to Eggsy. “Bind him into my service.”

 

The new gargoyle side of Harry was railing and snarling, the Omega demanded he submit to his mate, the rest of him just wanted to stay alive. And the memories told him something, the collar wouldn’t work on him, it wasn’t designed to. The collars had been created using blood magic, Eggsy’s blood, therefore the collars could only bind Eggsy’s clan, for in some way they were all related. Harry wasn’t clan by blood yet, not until the bond set or they were physically mated. He put up a token resistance, until Eggsy’s hands trailed into his hair and claiming little nips lined his neck and he bared his throat to his mate, who slid the leather around his throat and latched it securely.

 

“Release him Aureous, and you, young one, kneel and swear your fealty.”

 

There was no compulsion to obey, Harry just stood there, his eyes sliding to Eggsy, who nodded. “Kneel, please, I couldn’t bear to see you strangled.” Well, at least now Harry knew what the collar was supposed to do, but there was no tightening for disobedience. He pretended for half a second that there was, before he knelt before the king. But it was obvious that he had done it for Eggsy’s benefit and order, and not Chester’s. He also remained silent.

 

“Swear your fealty to me! I am your king, Arthur the twenty seventh, the Master Of Gargoyles!” Chester snarled, and Harry just glared. 

 

“I don’t know what that is or what it means.” Harry growled right back. “We don’t have pompous human kings to deal with in the Southern Fells.”

 

“Your allegiance, your loyalty, swear to fight for me, obey me, and protect me with your life!”

 

“I swear to fight for you and obey you and protect you, though the fact you feel protected behind an untrained omega fledgling says much about your own lack of ability.”

 

Chester was turning nearly apoplectic with rage, face red and near purple in fury. “I’m going to-”

 

“Going to what? Beat me? Kill me? You can’t afford to do that. I may not know of kings, but I know much about how magic works. The spell the traitor cast weakens every year because it was cast poorly upon so many instead of correctly over just one, and there is no recasting it until it breaks. At this point the slightest breach of terms will cause it to dissolve like grains of salt cast into water. The days of its control over us are limited, even more, now that you have bound yet another into it, stretching its power even thinner. Whereas before the magic was strong enough it allowed you to punish us, now your hold is so tenuous that the magic forces you to protect those under your control to even keep them that way. And I’m still a fledgling, I’m not allowed to fight on my own. So send the traitor or a guard after me, and I get to choose my champion, in a one on one fight. For claiming to be Master of Gargoyles, you know surprisingly little about us.” 

 

“Aureos, control your bitch, show him his proper place.” Chester tried to deflect. Eggsy just chuckled.

 

“I already have, it is here, beside me, in my life and in my nest. Argent was the one who decided to disturb that nest, to his detriment. My mate’s mouthiness doesn't offend me in the slightest, since all he speaks is the truth. ”

 

“This is all a disgusting farce Aureos, you may have a bond bite, but that little fledgling isn’t your mate. I can see right through this charade. You bit him to make him clan, you hid him, hoping to use him as an uncollared spy between you and the other clans, but I found him out. That little bitch is no more mated to you than I am, he’s still not of age, and I know you Aureos, you were over the moon for Tilde, you wouldn’t betray her promise for an underage whelp.”

 

Eggsy drew Harry closer against him, and Harry couldn’t resist clinging tight. It was hard to hear his mate loved or even had loved another, especially when their bond was so new and Harry knew, unwanted and rushed out of necessity.

 

“What need do I have of a spy? Let alone one that hasn’t grown into his wings yet? We have magic users ourselves Argent, better ones than you are, did you really think we hadn’t examined our own shackles in the past three decades? If I die, we’re free, if the king dies we’re free, if we just wait a while longer, we’re free. The army you promised to raise and invade the surrounding countries with not only failed, but became unnecessary since Merlin has made it so that other countries are flocking to give us their money and wouldn’t even think about going to war or invading us, and us invading them makes no sense since the relations between the kingdoms has never been better. The royal army hasn’t had anything to do besides protect the king and guard trade caravans for ten years now.

 

I won’t let you try and make my mate doubt me or my intentions. You won’t be a serpent dripping poisonous lies and doubts into his ear to try and sway him from my side, or turn and twist the beauty of our bond into something false. Tilde and I haven’t even seen or spoken since she fled with Sabelle thirty three years ago. She is part of a rival clan, our promise was broken a long time ago, and it was time for me to move on. Nothing more. Not everyone has an inherent desire to lie and deceive and betray others the way you do Argent. My mate is very worthy, he’s strong, fierce, brave, and came all this way on his own to join me and my clan. Hard as it is for you to believe, some people just want to be part of a family that will love, accept, and protect them. But that just wasn’t good enough for you, was it, Clanless?”

 

The barb struck deep, struck blood even. Argent was far from being numb to all he had willingly thrown away, or how badly it had gone for him, and Aureos had no problem driving knives and salt into those wounds as often as possible.

 

Chester however wasn’t so easily put off. “That doesn’t mean he’s mated, and I don’t like loose ends. Either you mate with him now and prove he’s part of your clan, or I’ll make you break that fake bond and Argent will finally have himself an Omega near breeding age.”

 

It was a no win situation, the thought of mating with someone so young was terrifying, Harry was nowhere near old enough for a heat, and his small frame couldn’t possibly take all of Aureos’s cock, let alone a knot without damage. But to not mate with him, to let him be passed over to Argent after swearing to protect him, he was nearly ill just from the thought. He let his grip around Harry remain firm. If that is the way it must be to save the boy’s life, he’d do it.

 

Harry didn’t care what it took to make sure he stayed safe with Eggsy. He refused to leave and go anywhere with the king or Argent. Eggsy tried leading him away, but they were stopped by Chester. “No, not in private, here, in front of all.”

 

“He’s my mate, not a whore to be taken quickly on the cold ground in the open air. I’ll prove he’s my mate, but I’ll take him on my own terms, in a real bed as he deserves, and nothing less.”

 

Eggsy tucked the eggs in before he went back inside with Harry. Charlie and Gazelle pulled a small bed out into the main room, but looked distinctly unhappy about it. The children were ushered off to the rookery with Faun, and most of the clan took up places around the bed with their backs turned and wings spread to afford at least visual privacy, and protect their clan leader and his omega from the guards while they were in a vulnerable state.

 

Only Roxy and Gazelle were facing inwards to make sure Argent didn’t try something, and to pull Harry away if needed. Both placed their fist to their chest and lowered their head to Eggsy, with a respectful “Alpha”, to show that they were not challenging him or his claim on Harry in any way. Argent and the king were inside the protective circle, and Eggsy was leading Harry in, but the boy suddenly tried to pull away, and Eggsy’s grip tightened and he dragged him in close. “I know, I know, I’m sorry little one, but I can’t fight against orders. Please don’t fight me. It’s a bit of buggery now, belonging to Argent, or worse, your corpse hanging from the castle wall.”

 

“It’s not that. I need ointment. I still can’t produce my own slick, at least not enough for if you start rutting me anyways.”

 

Eggsy’s eyes went wide, the danger of triggering a rut was very possible once they started, even though Harry was still so young, the Alpha’s mating urge to continue until Harry was properly claimed, knotted, and filled with Eggsy’s seed would be very strong since the bond was so new between them. Even though he wanted to be slow and gentle, he might not be able to. Corvis had obviously heard them and smirked as he produced a small jar from his pocket and silently held it out to them. Harry took it with a return smile and a murmured word of thanks.

 

Eggsy was well familiar with the stuff, Corvis claimed there were a hundred and one uses for his ointment, and that you could even eat it if need arose. The recipe was a closely guarded secret though.

 

He was surprised at how confident Harry was acting as the boy walked right over to the bed. Though it could well be a farce, he didn’t think so, with the way the boy was perfunctorily stripping off his clothes, then set one foot up on the mattress and pressed a generous amount of the ointment around and up his hole with two fingers before passing the jar to Eggsy so he could slick up his member. Eggsy was glad the boy didn’t seem scared or worried that he would hurt him. Eggsy wanted the boy to know he could trust him.

 

It surprised Eggsy completely though when Harry took his hand and led him to sit on the bed, before crawling straight into his lap and kissing him, rubbing his little cock against Eggsy’s much larger member in sure, confident strokes, not ashamed or shy in any way. 

 

“Don’t look at them, look at me. Aren’t I a far better sight? Let them watch if they want to watch, let the traitor wallow and writhe in his jealousy as his hopes are crushed as what is between us proves real. You’re MINE. My mate, my Alpha, my choice. You’ve claimed me, I’m yours. I’m never going to belong to some pathetic clanless traitor. It’s your bite on my neck, not his, it’s your brood I will someday carry, not his. He doesn’t deserve for his lineage to continue, whereas you? I’ll happily carry for you the rest of my days until your clan is the greatest known.”

 

As Harry raked his nails up the back of Eggsy’s head, he came forward into a deep and sensual kiss, making sure to make the older gargoyle gasp so he could slip his tongue inside. He could feel Eggsy’s arousal, encouraged it, made it so that even though this was an order, it wasn’t a violation, he showed Eggsy he was not scared, or worried about how Eggsy would handle him. He trusted his mate, he trusted the fact they were in this together. Sex was something Harry had done out of necessity before and he didn’t care that he was doing it out of necessity again. He encouraged his mate, until Eggsy’s hands gripped his arse, pulled him in closer and thrust up against his cocklet. Harry groaned “Yes, Alpha, my mate…” Eggsy’s lips and teeth wandered to his neck and nipped at Harry’s throat and ear, the hand he had slicked himself with trembled as he touched Harry’s little slick pucker, which twitched a bit at his touch, sending heat through the alpha’s belly.

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Stretch me for you, my alpha, stretch me so I can fit all of you inside of me with one thrust, knot and all.”

 

Harry let his tongue dart back inside Eggsy’s mouth, swallowing the gargoyle’s gasp. Eggsy’s tail lifted Harry’s own, fingers trailing over Harry’s hole lightly and then gently sliding one fingertip inside. Harry thrust back on it, pressing the digit fully inside him, with a content moan and gripping it tightly, as he’d been taught. “More, another. Please.”

 

The second thick finger was accepted just as quickly, with a tiny whine and whimper that Eggsy couldn’t tell if it was pain or need. The boy’s body though, clenching and releasing with every movement, holding tightly to whatever it was given. It was driving Eggsy wild. Even more so when Harry kissed him again, nipped his ear a bit and all but purred.

“See how hungry I am for you, My Alpha?”

 

That did it, that was the needed push, the alpha’s cock dragged itself back past his cock and taint, stroking over his hole, still filled with the gargoyles’ fingers. “Yes! Yes please!”

 

It was a near burning stretch, the fingers removed and the giant cockhead pressed against Harry’s hole. He found himself wishing it hadn’t been so long since his last fucking. Harry took a deep breath and relaxed as much as he could to accept the stiff rod. He angled it a bit better with his hand and managed to get the crown inside him fully with a sharp gasp. “More slick.” he murmured into his mates’ ear and Eggsy was quick to provide. They kept it to just the head pressing in and out of his hole for a few moments until he was ready for more and pressed down, impaling himself further on what felt like a pikestaff instead of a cockstand. Part of him felt like it was too much, too deep, that it would surely do him damage, the rest of him knew from experience, just how much more he could take. “Please, please, my alpha, my mate, please.” 

 

The hands were welcome, the tongue against his collarbone and niples, the tail around his waist, holding him in place and pulling him down, forcing him to take more, the grip in his hair that made him go lax and accepting and slide even further down the shaft that he knew would plow him fully and then sow its seed within. Harry felt the swollen knot at his hole, knew he wasn’t ready to take it yet, so didn’t try, just raised himself up then slid back down the length, over and over, keeping the fucking firm and steady as he gripped the cockerel firmly on each downward stroke, each one an easier slide than the last. “Now, my love, now.” Eggsy rolled Harry onto his back, spread his legs wide over his arms and began thrusting.

 

The little omega pulled his Alpha’s hips flush to his own. He buried any sounds of discomfort with nips and gasps and murmured encouragement and corrections until finally Eggsy found the stroke that had Harry arching and screaming in pleasure. “There! There my love right there!” The encouragement was all the motivation the Alpha needed, thrusting in and nearly pulling all the way out with each stroke, all but ramming the breath from Harry’s lungs until the omega could only clench and hold on, riding out the powerful fucking, and hoping he could survive the pleasure. He opened his eyes, only to actually catch sight of the traitor watching and the king seeming bored with the proceedings. Harry was deep into lust, maybe that’s what goaded him on, that or a total leave of what senses he had left. 

 

His nails over the bonding bite, a dominant nip to his Alphas’ throat. “Come Alpha, show the traitor why I chose you as my mate, show him that you could even sow your seed in infertile soil and have it bear fruit. He’s gonna look at my hole when we finish you know, wouldn’t you love to make him look at your seed dripping out of me because I am so full of you my body can’t hold another drop no matter how it tries?”

 

“You little MINX” was the growled snarl from Eggsy right before Harry cried out at the loss of his Alpha’s cock inside him before he was flipped over roughly onto his belly, chest pressed to the mattress and hips pulled back and up as he was impaled in one full harsh thrust that left him screaming in arousal. It devolved into full lust driven fucking from there, pounding flesh and muffled cries that left Harry barely able to gasp in a breath before it was rammed out of his lungs again. He could only grip the bed post and hang on until Eggsy pulled him so far back against him he felt the knot begin slipping in, stimulating his hole. He couldn’t help the cry as the bulb teased in and out of the rim, half in then back out again, but never fully pressing inside. The pounding thrusts didn’t relent, and Harry mewled helplessly as the knot finally was pushed inside, filling him beyond what he thought he could take, stretching him wider as it fucked in and out, each thrust nearly making him scream as the knot popped back out only to be shoved back in, a bit more engorged from the stimulation, until finally, Eggsy couldn’t pull back out. Harry couldn’t move, just the tiny little thrusts from the base to the knot and back down again. Even though they were knotted, it didn’t fully engorge like it would if Eggsy had hit full rut, or if Harry was in heat. Harry could have gotten loose though it would have hurt, but he didn’t want to be anywhere else. 

 

Eggsy held him there tight against his hips, spearing him open wide on his knotted cock as he came hard, pumping spurt after spurt into Harry’s pliant body, still clenching around the cock inside him, milking every drop of the alpha’s cock into himself. Loving the feel of how long those pulses kept going on and on and on. Harry felt the prickle of tears in his eyes, part of him wanting to cry and he couldn’t have said why. It was all just so real all of a sudden. He was married, mated, claimed, but was he wanted? Would this time be different? Truly different?

 

Eggsy covered him with arms and body, and he welcomed his alphas’ weight on top of him, only belatedly realizing that his own tail had wrapped around Eggsy’s waist, keeping him still and close. When the knot shrunk again, enough that Eggsy could slip out without hurting him, the gush of liquid trailing from his hole and down the inside of his thigh was enough to make Harry shudder. Eggsy got off the bed, leaving Harry there with his hips up and gasping, cum soaked hole exposed to the king and the traitor that the deed had very much been done. 

 

He couldn’t focus on anything that was being said around him, but the next thing he knew was there was a blanket wrapped around him, and he was pulled into his alpha’s arms and walked into a foreign bedroom, and laid on another bed, this time with Eggsy laying beside him, wrapping him in his wings, curling their tails together, and that’s when Harry broke down and really started crying, it was safe to cry here, and Eggsy just held him, and soothed him, even though Harry couldn’t really hear a single word. He knew there was ‘so brave’ and an ‘I promise’ in there somewhere, and he knows he said ‘I know’ at some point, but other than that, he just cuddled and was comforted by his mate, and that is where he finally fell asleep.

  
  


There had been many times where Eggsy had personally watched over the boy as he had curled up into his nest and fallen asleep among his eggs. As he looked at the little omega curled up into his arms, somehow his mated omega, he still saw great potential in the boy. He always had. The name Eggsy that Harry had given him, had spread quickly through the rest of the clan until only those who weren’t close to him even called him Aureos anymore.

 

He had in a way become theirs long ago, but they had never interacted with the boy except the once, when he was ill. Merlin had wanted the lad, but in truth, they couldn’t give him up, he was already clan at that point, it just hadn’t been made official until now. 

 

Once he knew that Harry was truly asleep he tucked the boy under the covers and bolted the door securely as he went back out into the room. The king, the guards, and the traitor were all gone, the bed had been removed, and Daisy had his nest’s eggs in a large basket with the blanket tucked around them near the fire to keep them warm as she spun thread.

 

Roxy was good enough to hand him his breeches and he used the few seconds it took to put them on to locate Ryan. No one stopped him as he stalked over and grabbed the fledgling by the arm and hauled him up. “WHAT is our first rule Ryan?!” He snarled into the fledgling’s face.

 

“To always look towards the horizon or to a wall, and not down while we sleep.” 

 

“And why? WHY do we do that Ryan?”

 

“Because we can’t report what we can’t see.”

 

“Harry was almost captured and KILLED tonight because you broke that rule. And he WAS forcibly married, and ceremonially RAPED because of your mistake. Be grateful that your message reached us in time, you don’t even want to imagine the consequences if it hadn’t. When he wakes up, you are going to apologize to him like you have never apologized before, you are going to beg him for his forgiveness, and you are going to be the best big brother to him from this moment forward or I will personally tan your hide for it. You are also grounded for a month, on rookery duty, and I had better not hear a single word of protest about it from your lips at any point, so help me God. Do you understand me?!”

 

“Yes Alpha! I understand!”

 

“Good, now, you can start by tending your siblings.” and he released the fledgling towards his sister, who handed over the eggs with a piteous smile towards Ryan. 

 

“Gazelle, Charlie, I need you to go and fetch Merlin for me. We need to make sure Harry wasn’t harmed, either by the magic or the mating, and that we avoid pregnancy if possible. I do not know how very different human and gargoyle types are, they have live births after all, so it’s possible they can bear even if they haven’t had a heat, and I would spare him a too young bearing if I can.”

 

His lieutenants were barely out the door before Daisy came with basin and rags. “I’ll tend him. You obviously don’t have enough control yet, and I doubt you’d allow anyone else near him besides Merlin.”

 

Eggsy only nodded and sat by the fire, hoping that gazing into the flames would grant him some insight as to what to do now. Harry was safe, but Daisy was still in danger. Perhaps Merlin would have some idea.

 

**********

 

Merlin jumped a mile when the two gargoyles landed on his roof even though he had told them a hundred times NOT to do that. He could understand little of what was hurriedly said beyond Harry might be hurt and ill again, grabbed everything he could need, and then tried VERY hard to not look as Charlie picked him up like a helpless maiden and took off for the cathedral. He HATED flying and he was getting ENTIRELY too old for this crap. 

 

He needed a far more knowledgeable source on what had happened, considering Eggsy wouldn’t even meet his eye, or in fact look up from the fireplace. It was disconcerting how everyone was avoiding the usually busy allotment of rooms they had made with his techniques, was Harry truly that ill? 

 

What he found when he got there however was Harry looking a bit flushed, but otherwise healthy and sleeping rather deeply, Daisy wiping him down, and was that a cloth stuck between his legs? 

 

“Alright lass, why don’t you give me the whole of the story, and not worry about my delicate sensibilities aye?”

 

He later wished he hadn’t asked. He also wished he had brought a gun with him because he had more than a small itching to just go and shoot Chester and Argent in the head… or would a grenade be better? No wonder Eggsy hadn’t looked at him, he probably thought he hated him. Merlin hadn’t exactly made it a secret how much he had cared for the boy, and they had refused to let him take Harry away before. Now that the lad was essentially married, he doubted very much that would change.

 

“Mostly though, Eggsy wants to make sure Harry doesn’t get pregnant this time, just so there is less chance of complications.”

 

“Lass, I know you’re young, but last I looked, Harry is a male, as is Eggsy. He can’t get pregnant.”

 

“Harry’s still unpresented, but he’s an Omega. He even said he would happily bear for Eggsy, so we know it is possible.”

 

Merlin felt himself go pale, he thought that the alpha and omega thing was just a gargoyle thing, he hadn’t ever paid much attention to it. When people said they couldn’t work due to their heat, he figured they were ill or on their menstrual cycle, he hadn’t paid it any mind aside from letting them know to ask if they needed medicine. There was a gap in his knowledge and that was simply unacceptable. He looked up on his tablet every item that would assure that Harry would NOT be getting pregnant right now, and mixed it up right then. “A pinch made into a tisane, twice a day for three days. Also, let’s douche him out immediately, to be sure.”

 

It was a very complicated procedure since the boy was rather shocked at seeing Merlin there, but complied readily enough. Together they got him cleaned out and the first cup of tisane down him before he felt well enough to get dressed and go out to see the others.

 

At seeing Eggsy glaring daggers at the fire, Harry flinched and shied away instinctively, his attention heading straight to the floor, and looked seconds away from kneeling. “Did-did I displease you Alpha?”

 

Eggsy jolted out of his contemplation in alarm, head whipping to Harry with wide eyes, out of the chair and pulling the boy close. “No! No of course you haven’t. I merely was lost in thought.”

 

Harry seemed to relax as Eggsy sat him in his lap as they curled together near the fire. Merlin sat opposite and debated the situation while Harry fell back to sleep immediately, nuzzled into the curve of Eggsy’s neck, and sheltered with his wings and the blanket Daisy had brought out.

 

“I take it you used magic to change him?” Merlin asked

 

“Yes.” Eggsy nodded in resignation, he knew there was no avoiding this.

 

“Is it a true transformation or only a disguise?”

 

“An illusion, through the crystal. We didn’t have time for anything more elaborate.”

 

“That’s only going to make it worse for him now you realize.”

 

“I was focused on saving his life, we didn’t really have time to plan anything.”

 

“Always thinking on your toes and dealing with the bigger picture later. Eggsy, what are you going to do with a human mate? He won’t have a purpose during the days while all of you are asleep, the eggs don’t need tending while they are stone, and he’ll have no one for company. He couldn’t leave, the monks don’t know about him and I guarantee you that Argent will sleep his days with his eyes on the cathedral looking for any misstep. Also, it would look suspicious for a gargoyle to be walking around during daylight, or a human boy to have access to your nests. Unless you can truly change him into one of your own kind, he can’t stay here Eggsy. You can’t lock the boy up in a tower everyday until the spell breaks, he needs freedom, and more importantly, he needs to learn and grow, not be caught in the middle of this feud between you, Argent, and the King.”

 

“If he runs we’ll be forced to track him and reveal him as a human and the thief they were looking for. He’ll be hanged.”

 

“I’m not suggesting he run, I’m suggesting that he and your sister, and the eggs come to stay with me. She’s who Argent is after right? I can hide her from Argent’s attentions, he won’t come near my home, I terrify him for some reason. The king has no use for her since she is still a fledgling. We’ll still be well within view of the king, so he knows that no one is running, and if she wishes, I can render her temporarily infertile. No courses, no heats to worry about, just working for me, as my assistant. I can also tell the king, and therefore Argent, that she is infertile, and I am trying to cure her of it. Another Omega won’t be near coming of age in Chester’s lifetime. Harry won’t have to hide, he can walk freely around as himself, and train to be my apprentice, he can tend the eggs, and you can come and visit and stay whenever you wish, and they can come visit the clan when it’s safe. It’s safest for them Eggsy, you know I’m right.”

 

“It doesn’t mean I have to like it. Two weeks. Let us have two weeks together to let the bond settle and for his clan to truly welcome him, and then they will come to live with you.”

 

Eggsy wouldn’t have touched Harry again outside of a heat unless he was under duress. But Harry was a far more seductive creature than anyone had ever realized, especially Eggsy. Harry seduced Eggsy three days after they mated, time and time again with burning hot kisses, knowing exactly how to touch and stroke and make the alpha want him. And always with words like ‘take me my alpha’  ‘make me yours’ and ‘please claim me.’ Eggsy bedded the boy again and again at his bequest, never more than a day or two apart, gently, roughly, once Harry had even taken him, fingering him open and sliding his small cocklet inside, not enough to satisfy, but enough to make Eggsy hunger for more. When finally Eggsy caught on to what Harry was doing, he took it upon himself and pulled Harry into what had become their bedroom when Harry got back from his nightly bath.

 

“I scared you didn’t I? After what Argent said about Tilde, and me not touching you afterward, you think I don’t want this bond, don’t want you.”

 

“Alpha I-”

 

“Shhh. Not Alpha, Eggsy. I’m not angry little one, you don’t have to try and appease me. I hesitated because you are so young Harry, you are eighty seven years younger than Daisy, and you are countless years younger than me. But I won’t release you unless you want me to Harry. You ARE mine, even though it was forced. I’m not going to let you go. Despite the age difference, we are very well matched in temperament. You are my beautiful and clever little mate. You don’t have to seduce me into keeping you. Do you want me to prove that you’re mine? My omega, precious and dear and claimed completely?”

 

Harry’s eyes were wide, his cheeks were flushed and his breathing was fast as he nodded. Eggsy took his time, undressing the small boy slowly with care, kissing flesh as it was exposed, first a soft stomach, then each little nipple, and he spent a near obscene amount of time on Harry’s shoulders. When he got to Harry’s neck he tapped the chain which held the crystal. “Take it off. Tonight, there is just us.” 

 

Now that the magic had settled, Harry was returned to his human form the moment the necklace was removed, his gargoyle image shimmering away like mist. The oil lamps were still lit, there were no covers to hide under, and Eggsy looked his fill, let his hands wander and explore down each arm, bring up each hand up to place a kiss on every finger. He spent at least ten minutes worshiping each of Harry’s hands in their entirety before moving onto his wrists. He cradled the boy as he laid him out on the bed, kissing and tonguing his way across chest and ribs and stomach, then down each leg. He left no part untouched, unworshiped, even down to the boy’s feet and each adorable little toe before kissing his omega’s sweet little cocklet. Tiny kisses, gentle licks, soft lipping nibbles as he mouthed the boys' stones until the boy was hard and gasping, but still being good, being so very good for him.

 

He turned Harry over and continued kissing, touching, and stroking. First the boy’s neck and ears, then his shoulders and back. There was such lovely skin to kiss on Harry’s back, then further down, stroking and kissing each cheek of the boy’s little arse, and continuing down, finding Harry was ticklish on the backs of his knees and delighting in making the boy squeal as he suckled each one. 

 

Harry was panting by the time Eggsy reached his feet again, bending each foot up before stroking and kissing the sole of his foot. His cock was hard and full by this point, and he let the boy feel its weight drag up the inside of each thigh before sliding in right in that little diamond shaped space between the boy’s legs and his bottom, and pressing Harry’s legs together to get friction against it. Harry moaned and pushed back into it but Eggsy pressed him back down. He wasn’t going to let Harry do anything tonight but be taken apart by pleasure. 

 

As he fucked slowly between the boy’s thighs his cockerel delighted in the feel of stroking behind the boy’s balls and the underside of his tight and stiff little cock until Harry was gasping for air. He pressed more of his weight into the little omega, pinning him to the bed.   
  
“Feel me? Feel what just touching and kissing you and the scent of your skin can do to me? Don’t ever think that I don’t want you, my Harry. You haven’t laid a finger on me and I’m wondering how I will be able to hold out as long as I can before I give in and fuck you.” 

 

Harry shivered head to toe. “Yes Alpha, MY Alpha, anything you want.” 

 

His pace was slow and thorough, he continued as he kissed the boy’s neck and shoulders again, and gently rubbed and stroked along the boy’s arms until he could entwine their fingers. “Are you sure? I could tease you like this for hours, I could put you on your knees, presenting your little hole for me to take at my leisure. And it would be slow Harry, so very slow. I’d tongue and finger you open until you were sobbing in need, then drag my cock over your hole again and again and again, just catching the head on the rim and dragging off again, smacking it with the weight every now and again so I could watch it clench, desperate to be filled. If you broke down and begged me, I’d start all over again with my tongue until you could hold for as long as I wanted to stroke you before sliding in. I won’t be rushed with you, not tonight.”

 

“Yes Eggsy, anything you want. I can do that. I can be very very good for you.”

 

And god help him but he couldn’t help but test the boy’s word. He did hike up Harry’s hips and lick and finger the boy open until his hole was clenching and opening even with nothing to grab onto, and he hadn’t even touched it with his cock even once. The boy was true to his word too, he didn’t move and he didn’t beg either. Oh he was far from silent, gasping and mewling and little cries of ‘Eggsy’ or ‘Alpha’. Eggsy was proud of him and didn’t prolong his torment.

 

He reclined back, pulling the boy’s arse with him and burying his face in that hidden place already wet with omega slick and determined to eat his boy out good and proper. “Slick me up with that tongue and mouth of yours. Then the ointment is on the side table.” Harry was nothing if not extremely talented, sucked his cock like the last thing he ever wanted to taste in this world was the alphas’ cum on his tongue. He somehow managed to get the entire thing down his throat and still manage to flick his tongue around the knot. Little minx. Harry soaked Eggsy’s cock with so much drool they probably didn’t even need the ointment, but Eggsy pressed some to the boy’s hole anyway. He wouldn’t harm him.

 

He laid the boy on his side, and gently but firmly, speared the boy open on his cock in one long, slow, steady thrust. Harry gasped, clung to the linens and gripped tight, trying to keep his eyes open but also driven to clench them shut. When he reached the knot, he didn’t stop, he kept pressing, until the bulb was forced into Harry’s body and Eggsy had the boy’s arse pressed flush against his hips. He waited, letting Harry cry and sob as he just held him, bottomed out in the omega’s arse, his sweet mate still clenching and squeezing his cock, desperate for more and yet already overwhelmed. Eggsy kissed his forehead, his hair, gently stroked his back. When Harry kissed him back, it was only for a second before Eggsy pulled his hips back, the knot sliding back out with reluctance as he withdrew all but the head from his omega’s hole. “DO you want me to be gentle? I can be gentle with you Harry.” 

 

Harry couldn’t speak but violently shook his head no. No, gentle was not what Eggsy’s tiny little mate wanted or needed, he wanted to feel how much his Alpha wanted him, but Eggsy had needed to be sure. He curled over Harry, placed a kiss to the boy’s temple and held the boy’s hand as he let his hips snap forward and impale the omega on his shaft once more. 

 

Harry did nothing more than whimper as the cockstand rammed home again and again into his hole. He bore down, he clenched, he felt the press of the knot teasing him but not quite sliding inside like the first time, no matter how he wanted it to. The rough fast thrusts were almost punishing but it was exactly what Harry needed, to be claimed of his alpha’s own free will, not the demand of the king.

 

Harry was so over sensitive by the time the knot finally slid home again he didn’t even notice Eggsy had reached for his cocklet and actually yelped as Eggsy’s hand closed around it. Harry couldn’t help it, he fiercely humped into that nice tight hand, nearly dislodging the knot, which just wasn’t acceptable, so he pushed back, only to nearly lose the friction on his cocklet, trapping him in an endless loop of not quite enough. 

 

“Allow me.” Eggsy purred into Harry’s ear right before redoubling his thrusts, driving Harry’s hips forward faster, so there was no break between thrusts. 

 

“Alpha! Oh Alpha! YES! EGGSY! YES! Yes! I’ll be good! I’ll be good, I swear I’ll be good for you!”

 

“You already are, sweetling, but if you want me to cum inside of you, you have to ask nicely.”

 

“Please! Please Eggsy! Please, I’ll be good! Your good omega, best omega ever, PLEASE!”

 

With how swollen his knot was it was near torture for both of them for Eggsy to pull the knot out and slam it back in once, twice, thrice, then bit right over the bond bite again, reinforcing it, reclaiming, proving a point that Harry was truly his. It caused the boy to scream from the stretch and the bite, then spurt sticky clear fluid over Eggsy’s hand, the closest the boy could get to cumming at his age, his breaths gasping and ragged as he rode out the alpha still pounding into him in hard but shallow thrusts, clenching as tightly as he could.

 

When Eggsy came minutes later, after screwing the loose and deliriously fucked out boy beneath him nearly unconscious, it was long and drawn out, the two of them locked together with a knot big enough to be seen in a heat. He must have pumped into that boy for a quarter of a candlemark, his stones and cock refusing to stop spasming, determined to breed this omega with every drop within him. 

 

“You’re MINE Harry, forever.” Eggsy said, pressing kiss after kiss to Harry’s forehead and hair.

 

Harry could only nod before falling asleep with his Alpha’s arms around him and his knot still inside him. 

 

Waking up a couple hours later wasn’t pleasant for either of them, but the bath Eggsy gave the both of them was. Harry was in much brighter spirits after that, and the bond between them finally started to settle properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter might take a couple of days, but it WILL be out shortly I promise. It is 95% done, it just need a final bit of polish.


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